Recent developments and applications of a real-time tool to detect magma migration in different volcanic settings and network optimization.

Abstract:

Triggering mechanism of a seismic swarm has to be identified with great confidence in real time. Crisis response will not be the same whether magma is involved or not. The recent developments of a method based on the Seismic Amplitude Ratio Analysis enable a rapid and unambiguous diagnosis to detect migrating micro-seismicity. The beauty of this method lies in the fact that the ratio of seismic energy, recorded at different stations, is independent of the seismic energy radiated at the source and depends only on the location of the source and attenuation of the medium. Since drastic changes in attenuation are unlikely to occur at the time scale of magma intrusion, temporal evolutions in the measured ratio have to be explained by a change in the source location. Based on simple assumptions, this technique can be used to assess the potential of existing monitoring seismic network to detect migrating events in real-time. Of much importance, it can also be used to design monitoring seismic network based on the available number of sensors, as well as from field constraints.

The method will be implemented in MSNoise software (http://www.msnoise.org/). This allows us to mine existing datasets, to compare the different noise-based techniques, but also to use the method for monitoring purposes. We will present how the key question: “Migration or No Migration” could be answered in real time without need of complex calculation nor full knowledge of the site effect and attenuation of the medium.