Environmental Engineering Reference
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would deposit significant amounts of ash if the
wind were blowing in the same direction than the
vent-observatory alignment and the distance from
the vent to the observatory did not exceed 10-15
kilometres. several historical and recent (last 35 ka)
eruptions have taken place within that distance
The chilean observatory of Paranal and the
candidate site of cerro Ventarrones could be
affected by a Vei = 6 eruption if the wind blowed
westwards, a condition that happens less than 0.5%
of the time. in the case of la Palma and hawaii,
the chances to have significant depositions of ash
at the observatory site are negligible for a Vei = 2
eruption. Probabilities remain low for Vei = 3
eruptions in both islands, considering that the
directions from the possible vents to the observa-
tories significantly differ from the prevailing wind
directions. an eruption of Mauna kea volcano in
hawaii would certainly be catastrophic, since ash
deposition could exceed several meters in thickness
in the proximity of the vent, besides the expected
strong seismicity and the likelihood of lava inunda-
tion (Mullineaux et al. 1987).
ciRes) climate Diagnostics center, Boulder,
colorado, Usa, from their web site at
http://www.
cdc.noaa.gov/
.
ReFeRences
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5
conclUsions
The lowest geological hazard in both seismic and
volcanic activity was found at Roque de los Much-
achos observatory, in the island of la Palma. seis-
mic hazard is also low at the other canarian site,
el Teide observatory, since seismic activity in the
canary islands is low in both number and magni-
tude of earthquakes. on the contrary, seismic haz-
ard is very high in Paranal and Ventarrones (chile)
and in Mauna kea (hawaii). hazard associated
to lava flows during a volcanic eruption is not sig-
nificant at any site, as the result of low volcanic
activity in the regions where the sites are emplaced,
topographical protection or distance to the erup-
tive vents. hazard associated to volcanic ashfall is
negligible at Mauna kea, Roque de los Muchachos
and chile and low to moderate in Tenerife, depend-
ing on the prevailing winds and the still poorly
known explosive volcanic activity.
acknoWleDGeMenTs
Partially funded by the spanish Micinn under
the consolider-ingenio 2010 Program grant
csD2006-00070: First science with the GTc
(
http://www.iac.es/consolider-ingenio-gtc
). This
work has made use of the nceP Reanalysis data
provided by the national oceanic and atmos-
pheric administration/cooperative institute for
Research in environmental sciences (noaa/
