Los Llanos de Aridane (La Palma) (EFE) Todoque, next to the cliff at whose feet the first fajana was formed, for its “high scientific value”.
This was stated by the general director of the IGME, Ana María Alonso, and the head scientific researcher of the territorial unit of the Canary Islands, Nieves Sánchez, after meeting with the special commissioner for the reconstruction of La Palma, Héctor Izquierdo.
That particular area, the most productive for banana cultivation on the entire island, is in turn “a complete geological structural unit, where all the lava that flowed from the volcano has descended down the cliff,” Nieves Sánchez has described.
“The value that this has is so high that it cannot be lost, because it is a place where you can learn how the eruption has worked, for us and for future generations,” he added.
“We can’t lose that. If we lose it, it cannot be recovered. It is not a unit of flora or fauna that we can reintroduce. The ephemeral geological heritage is lost », she asserted.
For her part, Ana María Alonso pointed out that “we are very used to protecting biodiversity and protecting historical heritage, but we are little used to protecting geodiversity and geological heritage, and that is an asset that we have to know that if we lose it, we are going to lose it forever».
“Obviously, we don’t have to protect everything”, the general director of IGME has conceded, “but there are some of a unique value that I think it would be good if we kept in mind that we must protect it, because that is our wealth, it speaks to us about our history and of course we must preserve it for the future.
Nieves Sánchez has detailed that the IGME has carried out an inventory of places of geological interest generated with the new eruption following a methodology in which the scientific, educational, cultural, tourist and dissemination nature is valued.
And based on this work, two lava areas have been identified that should be protected: this one on the cliff where the first fajana was formed, and the area around the cone of the volcano.
Sánchez stressed that “it is not just about protecting for the sake of protecting”, because doing it “in a territory that cannot be used for anything is useless”.
«You have to be able to use it and you have to use it from a scientific, didactic, cultural, educational and, of course, tourist point of view. The more we can take advantage of all this new territory, the more we will all gain, our children and the generations that may come, not now, but many years from now ».
“We forget that our lives are 80-90 years, but on a geological scale it is much longer and the human species on Earth has been around for a long time and will continue to be here, let’s hope,” he pointed out.
Nieves Sánchez has also reported that one of the IGME’s missions in La Palma is to investigate the origin of the gases that keep the coastal towns of Puerto Naos and La Bombilla evacuated.
The hypothesis that this organism will lower is that the gases come from the upper part where the eruption occurred and are transported by the aquifer to the coastal area, rather than there really being a mass of magma under it.
If that were the case, I would propose an engineering solution to establish “a kind of barrier”, but for that, you must first carry out a geophysical survey to find out where the aquifer is and what its characteristics are, and then you would consider doing some hydrogeological surveys to sample the aquifer. and effectively know where the gases are.
The main reason for the meeting of the IGME representatives with the commissioner for the reconstruction of La Palma was to see how to take advantage of the materials generated by the volcanic eruption.
Ana María Alonso has pointed out that “practically all” volcanic material can be used and that the IGME proposes, in collaboration with the Eduardo Torroja Foundation, a project to use pyroclasts for certain construction materials. EFE