Volcanoes are hazardous to local and global populations, but only a fraction are continuously monitored by ground-based sensors. For example, in Latin America, more than 60% of Holocene volcanoes are unmonitored, meaning long-term multiparameter data sets of volcanic activity are rare and sparse. We use satellite observations of degassing, thermal anomalies, and surface deformation spanning 17 years at 47 of the most active volcanoes in Latin America and compare these data sets to ground-based observations archived by the Global Volcanism Program. This first comparison of multisatellite time series on a regional scale provides information regarding volcanic behavior during, noneruptive, pre-eruptive, syneruptive, and posteruptive periods. For example, at Copahue volcano, deviations from background activity in all three types of satellite measurements were manifested months to years in advance of renewed eruptive activity in 2012. By quantifying the amount of degassing, thermal output, and deformation measured at each of these volcanoes, we test the classification of these volcanoes as open or closed volcanic systems. We find that~28% of the volcanoes do not fall into either classification, and the rest show elements of both, demonstrating a dynamic range of behavior that can change over time. Finally, we recommend how volcano monitoring could be improved through better coordination of available satellite-based capabilities and new instruments.
Recent geophysical evidence for large-scale regional crustal inflation and localized crustal magma intrusion has made Lastarria volcano (northern Chile) the target of numerous geological, geophysical, and geochemical studies. The chemical composition of volcanic gases sampled during discrete campaigns from Lastarria volcano indicated a well-developed hydrothermal system from direct fumarole samples in A.D. 2006, 2008, and 2009, and shallow magma degassing using measurements from in situ plume sampling techniques in 2012. It is unclear if the differences in measured gas compositions and resulting interpretations were due to artifacts of the different sampling methods employed, short-term excursions from baseline due to localized changes in stress, or a systematic change in Lastarria's magmatic-hydrothermal system between 2009 and 2012. Integrated results from a two-day volcanic gas sampling and measurement campaign during the 2014 International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior (IAVCEI) Commission on the Chemistry of Volcanic Gases (CCVG) 12 th Gas Workshop are used here to compare and evaluate current gas sampling and measurement techniques, refine the existing subsurface models for Lastarria volcano, and provide new constraints on its magmatic-hydrothermal system and total degassing budget. While compositional differences among sampling methods are present, distinct compositional changes are observed, which if representative of longterm trends, indicate a change in Lastarria's overall magmatic-hydrothermal system. The composition of volcanic gases measured in 2014 contained high proportions of relatively magma-and water-soluble gases consistent with degassing of shallow magma, and in agreement with the 2012 gas composition. When compared with gas compositions measured in 2006-2009, higher relative H 2 O/CO 2 ratios combined with lower relative CO 2 /S t and H 2 O/S t and stable HCl/St ratios (where S t is total S [SO 2 + H 2 S]) are observed in 2012 and 2014. These compositional changes suggest variations in the magmatichydrothermal system between 2009 and 2012, with possible scenarios to explain these trends including: (1) decompression-induced degassing due to magma ascent within the shallow crust; (2) crystallization-induced degassing of a stalled magma body; (3) depletion of the hydrothermal system GEOSPHERE
ReuseThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND) licence. This licence only allows you to download this work and share it with others as long as you credit the authors, but you can't change the article in any way or use it commercially. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ TakedownIf you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. AbstractOwing to practical limitations less than half of Earth's 1400 subaerial volcanoes have no ground monitoring and few are monitored consistently. Earth-observing satellite missions provide global and frequent measurements of volcanic activity that are closing these gaps in coverage. We compare databases of global, satellite-detections of ground deformation (1992-2016), SO 2 emissions , and thermal features (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016) that together include 306 volcanoes. Each database has limitations in terms of spatial and temporal resolution but each technique contributed 45-86 unique detections of activity that were not detected by other techniques.Integration of these three databases shows that satellites detected ~10 2 volcanic activities per year before the year 2000 and ~10 3 activities per year after the year 2000. We find that most of the 54 erupting volcanoes without satellite-detections are associated with low volcano explosivity index eruptions and note that many of these eruptions (71%, 97/135) occurred in the earliest decades of remote sensing (pre-2000) when detection thresholds were high. From 1978-2016 we conduct a preliminary analysis of the timing between the onset of satellite-detections of deformation (N=154 episodes, N=71 volcanoes), thermal features (N=16544 episodes, N=99 volcanoes), and SO 2 emissions (N=1495 episodes, N=116 volcanoes) to eruption start dates. We analyze these data in two ways: first, including all satellite-detected volcanic activities associated ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P Twith an eruption; and second, by considering only the first satellite-detected activity related to eruption. In both scenarios, we find that deformation is dominantly pre-eruptive (47% and 57%) whereas available databases of thermal features and SO 2 emissions utilizing mainly lowresolution sensors are dominantly co-eruptive (88% and 76% for thermal features, 97% and 96% for SO 2 emissions).
As our ability to detect volcanic unrest improves, we are increasingly confronted with the question of whether the unrest has a magmatic origin (magma on the move) or a non-magmatic origin from a change in the hydrothermal system (fluids that are not magma on the move) or tectonic processes. The cause of unrest has critical implications for the potential eruptive hazard (e.g. used in constructing Bayesian Event Trees), but is frequently the subject of debate, even at well-studied systems. Here, we propose a set of multi-disciplinary observations and numerical models that could be used to evaluate conceptual models about the cause of unrest. These include measurements of gas fluxes and compositions and the isotopic signature of some components (e.g. H 2 , He, C, SO 2 , H 2 O , CH 4 and CO 2 ), the spatial and temporal characteristics of ground deformation, thermal output, seismicity, changes in gravity, and whether there is topographic uplift or subsidence spanning hundreds to thousands of years. In several volcanic systems, both magmatic and non-magmatic unrest is occurring at the same time. While none of these observations or models is diagnostic on its own, we illustrate several examples where they have been used together to make a plausible conceptual model of one or more episodes of unrest and whether eruptions did or did not follow the unrest. This article is part of the Theo Murphy meeting issue ‘Magma reservoir architecture and dynamics’.
Water (H2O) is by far the most abundant volcanic volatile species and plays a predominant role in driving volcanic eruptions. However, numerous difficulties associated with making accurate measurements of water vapor in volcanic plumes have limited their use as a diagnostic tool. Here we present the first detection of water vapor in a volcanic plume using passive visible‐light differential optical absorption spectroscopy (DOAS). Ultraviolet and visible‐light DOAS measurements were made on 21 May 2016 at Sabancaya Volcano, Peru. We find that Sabancaya's plume contained an exceptionally high relative water vapor abundance 6 months prior to its November 2016 eruption. Our measurements yielded average sulfur dioxide (SO2) emission rates of 800–900 t/d, H2O emission rates of around 250,000 t/d, and an H2O/SO2 molecular ratio of 1000 which is about an order of magnitude larger than typically found in high‐temperature volcanic gases. We attribute the high water vapor emissions to a boiling‐off of Sabancaya's hydrothermal system caused by intrusion of magma to shallow depths. This hypothesis is supported by a significant increase in the thermal output of the volcanic edifice detected in infrared satellite imagery leading up to and after our measurements. Though the measurement conditions encountered at Sabancaya were very favorable for our experiment, we show that visible‐light DOAS systems could be used to measure water vapor emissions at numerous other high‐elevation volcanoes. Such measurements would provide observatories with additional information particularly useful for forecasting eruptions at volcanoes harboring significant hydrothermal systems.
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