Deformation Sources in Kīlauea’s Southwest Rift Zone Inferred from the Modeling of Geodetic and Seismic Data

Abstract:

For much of the first 20 years of Kīlauea’s 1983–present ERZ (East Rift Zone) eruption, deformation was characterized by subsidence at the summit and along both rift zones. We speculate that subsidence of the rift zones was caused by deep rift opening and basal fault slip. A 3D Mixed-Boundary Element model including deep rift-zone opening (running from ~3 to 9 km depth beneath Kīlauea’s East and Southwest Rift Zones) as well as slip on the décollement fault that underlies the volcano’s south flank (at ~9 km depth) can indeed explain most of the deformation imaged by InSAR data from RADARSAT-1 and JERS-1 spanning two distinct background periods: 1993-1997 and 2000-2003, respectively.

At the end of 2003, however, Kīlauea’s summit began a 4-year-long period of inflation that culminated in an ERZ dike intrusion and small eruption during 17–19 June 2007—the “Father’s Day” (FD) event. On the basis of deformation, seismicity, effusion rate, and lava chemistry and temperature, the FD event was interpreted as the result of forcible intrusion of magma driven by high pressure within the summit magma storage area, as opposed to a passive response to deep rift zone opening. This period of summit inflation is particularly interesting in 2006. According to daily GPS data, two distinct periods can be defined, spanning January to March 2006 and March to end of 2006. A major seismic swarm occurred during the first period while the south caldera area was inflating. The beginning of the second period corresponds to a switch from subsidence to inflation of the SWRZ (Southwest Rift Zone). The SWRZ had been subsiding since the last eruptive episode there in 1974, with the exception of a few dike injections in 1981-82. To investigate the magmatic processes which occurred during 2006 and their implications in terms of the magma plumbing system and local stress field, we integrate contemporary geodetic data from InSAR and GPS with seismic and geologic observations of the SWRZ.