Project Overview
Mayon, with its emblematic conical shape, is a stratovolcano located in Albay, 300 km southeast of Manilla. Despite its beautiful appearance, Mayon is capable of producing devastating plinian eruptions and generating pyroclastic flows, and is an openly-degassing volcano with frequent activity, although mostly small. The most recent eruptions occurred in Aug-Sept 2006, Dec 2009 and May 2013, and a dome extruded in Aug 2014.
Since 2011, continuous seismic, tilt, plume SO2, and spring data are acquired. This project contributes to the PHIVOLCS (Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology) warning mission by providing new instrumentation, monitoring data, and geologic background.
Three questions guide EOS research at Mayon Lab Volcano:
- What are the pre-eruptive conditions of magmas stored below Mayon (depth, volatile content and composition, temperature)?
- What are the main processes that occur in the reservoir and conduit and how may these relate to triggering of eruptions (e.g., magma mixing, convection in the conduit, volatile overpressure)?
- What are the time scales of the magmatic processes and how do they relate to the monitoring signals (e.g. time-series comparison between changes in seismicity or gas flux and replenishment events as deduced from petrology)?