Volcano Monitoring and Deformation

The most active volcanoes in the world are oceanic island volcanoes. They are located above hot spots in the Earth’s mantle which are causing the volcanism. The volcanoes on the Western Galapagos islands (right) of Isabela and Fernandina have in average 3 eruptions  every 10 years. Using InSAR we can derive constraints on the magmatic systems, such as the location and depth of the magma chamber. For Darwin volcano (left) we found that the magma chamber is at ~3 km depth beneath the center of the caldera. From Falk Amelung

3. Volcano Deformation

GPS and InSAR can be used to monitor volcano deformation.  This is of great practical interest for hazard assessment, because volcanoes are thought to undergo significant inflation in the weeks or months prior to large eruptions (of course the data have to be available in a timely manner) [Dixon et al., 1993, 1995; Webb et al., 1995; Hagerty et al., 1997]. Volcano deformation is also of scientific interest, because the pattern and magnitude of surface displacement can be used to determine the depth, and in some cases the size and shape of the center of deformation, which may be related to the top of the magma chamber or a dike [Dixon et al., 1997; Mattioli et al., 1998; Newman et al., 2001, 2006; Walters and Amelung, 2005].

The Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS), located in southern Miami-Dade county on the University of Miami’s Richmond campus, makes selected remote sensing data, including SAR, available for rapid response natural hazard studies, including assessment of eruption potential for volcanoes with the ground station mask (Mexico, Central America, northern South America, and the Lesser Antilles.) Within this region there are approximately 50 active volcanoes.