Muography as a new complementary tool in monitoring volcanic hazard: implications for early warning systems

Abstract

Muography uses muons naturally produced in the interactions between cosmic rays and atmosphere for imaging and characterization of density differences and time-sequential changes in solid (e.g. rocks) and liquid (e.g. melts ± dissolved gases) materials in scales from tens of metres to up to a few kilometres. In addition to being useful in discovering the secrets of the pyramids, ore prospecting and surveillance of nuclear sites, muography successfully images the internal structure of volcanoes. Several field campaigns have demonstrated that muography can image density changes relating to magma ascent and descent, magma flow rate, magma degassing, the shape of the magma body, an empty conduit diameter, hydrothermal activity and major fault lines. In addition, muography is applied for long-term volcano monitoring in a few selected volcanoes around the world. We propose using muography in volcano monitoring in conjunction with other existing techniques for predicting volcanic hazards. This approach can provide an early indication of a possible future eruption and potentially the first estimate of its scale by producing direct evidence of magma ascent through its conduit in real time. Knowing these issues as early as possible buy critically important time for those responsible for the local alarm and evacuation protocols.

Trends in Publishing Muography Related Research: The Situation at the End of 2020

“…The close connection between geoscience and muography has continued to flourish with the introduction of the many new application related to earth materials (not only rocks but also sediments), such as those related to volcanoes [5,13,14,15], mineral exploration and mining operations [16,17,18], geoengineering [16,17,19], and in many, many other types of geoscience research challenges [20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30]. In all of its varied forms, the connection between muography and subsurface research has recently culminated in the first-ever book solely dedicated to muography.…”

Muon Imaging of Volcanic Conduit Explains Link Between Eruption Frequency and Ground Deformation

“…Muography has already been used to image the spatio‐temporal evolution of magmatic materials—for example, ascent and descent of magma within a volcanic vent (Tanaka et al., 2014), magma degassing (Tanaka et al., 2009), and plug formation underneath deactivated craters (Oláh et al., 2019)—and to observe structural changes (Lo Presti et al., 2022; Tioukov et al., 2022) and hydrothermal activities (Gibert et al., 2022) in volcanic systems. The early warning capabilities of muography have also been studied (Leone et al., 2021; Nomura et al., 2020; Oláh & Tanaka, 2022a). We conducted muography of Sakurajima volcano over the period from September 2018 to July 2021.…”

Igneous processes in the small bodies of the Solar System I. Asteroids and comets

“…Similar to X-ray technology, muography takes advantage of the strong penetration of cosmic-ray atmospheric muons (high-energy muons generated in the Earth’s atmosphere can travel through 1 km or more on rock before decaying), to image the internal structure of gigantic geological and manmade objects on land (e.g., volcanoes, for instance in the study by Leone et al. 280 and pyramids, for instance in the study by Morishima et al. 281 ) and also in the ocean (e.g., tsunami in the study by Tanaka et al.…”