The mudflow disaster at Villa Santa Lucía in Chilean Patagonia:  understandings and insights derived from numerical  simulation and postevent field surveys

Somos-Valenzuela, Marcelo A.; Oyarzún-Ulloa, Joaquín E.; Fustos-Toribio, Ivo J.; Garrido-Urzua, Natalia; Chen, Ningsheng

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2319-2020

Articles | Volume 20, issue 8

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2319-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-20-2319-2020

© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 20, issue 8

Research article

|

26 Aug 2020

Research article |

| 26 Aug 2020

The mudflow disaster at Villa Santa Lucía in Chilean Patagonia: understandings and insights derived from numerical simulation and postevent field surveys

Marcelo A. Somos-Valenzuela, Joaquín E. Oyarzún-Ulloa, Ivo J. Fustos-Toribio, Natalia Garrido-Urzua, and Ningsheng Chen

Data sets

ALOS PALSAR_Radiometric_Terrain_Corrected_hi_res ASF DAAC https://doi.org/10.5067/Z97HFCNKR6VA

Model code and software

R.avaflow model for the VSL event Oyarzún-Ulloa, Somos-Valenzuela, and Fustos-Toribio https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3998134

Short summary

This work presents a study of the biggest mudflow event in 20 years in Chilean Patagonia, which resulted from an avalanche in the Cordon Yelcho. We integrate in situ geotechnical tests and numerical modeling to model the Villa Santa Lucía mudflow event. Our results suggest that the initial soil water content is sufficient to transform the landslide and scoured soil into a mudflow. Therefore, knowing the soil characteristics is crucial to evaluating the impact of landslides in the study area.