Marapi Lab Volcano

Project Overview

Marapi is a complex stratovolcano that is the most active in Sumatra, located near the large city of Padang (with ~ 1 million inhabitants), and the closest volcano to Singapore (430 km). Since the end of the 18^th century, there have been more than 50 eruptions recorded, typically consisting of small-to-moderate explosive activity. The latest explosion occurred in Nov 2015. Marapi’s high level of activity offers a unique opportunity to record unrest and eruptive signals. 

Using high-resolution digital elevation models (DEM) in this project

Due to the tropical climate and nearly constant cloud cover, the laboratory volcanoes are not covered by commercially available high-resolution digital elevation models (DEM). Such high-resolution DEM are of paramount importance in many different applications: (i) Close range high-frequency waveform inversion is controlled by the topography; (ii) deformation patterns obtained from InSAR and structure from motion are controlled by the topography; (iii) the final footprint of lahar and pyroclastic flow simulations are controlled by the topography; and (iv) the quality of the inversion of the density structure from MUON tomographic data is controlled by the topography. Finally, being able to get time series of high-resolution DEM will allow us to detect small scale deformations that could remain invisible when using only cGPS and InSAR. An example of a DEM can be seen below.