Dynamics of the deeper part of explosive volcanic systems

Project Overview

One of the most active explosive volcanoes in the world, the Soufriere Hills Volcano (Montserrat, West Indies)has been active for more that 17 years and offers rare opportunities to increase our fundamental knowledge on explosive volcanoes. Observations of this eruption are invaluable and gave the scientific community the opportunity to draw new hypothesis on the physical processes occurring at depth.

To analyse the flux of sulphur dioxide and extract reliable information, I had to extend the wavelet analysis to incomplete time series. The results showed that the long-term periodic behaviour was uncorrelated to the activity at the vent and thus could give us access to the dynamics of the deeper part of the system. The different hypotheses that could explain such periodic behaviour are currently being modelled and are part of an on-going collaboration.

I have also extended the method developed during my first postdoctoral position to locate individual events. The motivation to develop such a method came from the observation of a seismic crisis, hundreds of earthquakes, preceding one of the major explosions at Soufriere Hills. It was clear to me that classical location method could not be applied and that an automated method was necessary.