Monitoring eruption activity from temporal stress changes at Mt. Ontake volcano, Japan

Abstract:

On 27 September 2014, Mt. Ontake in Japan produced a phreatic (steam type) eruption with a Volcanic Explosivity Index value of 2 after being dormant for seven years. The local stress field around volcanoes is the superposition of the regional stress field and stress perturbations related to volcanic activity. Temporal stress changes over periods of weeks to months are generally attributed to volcanic processes. Here we show that monitoring temporal changes in the local stress field beneath Mt. Ontake, using focal mechanism solutions of volcano-tectonic (VT) earthquakes, is an effective tool for assessing the state of volcanic activity. We estimated focal mechanism solutions of 157 VT earthquakes beneath Mt. Ontake from August 2014 to March 2015, assuming that the source was double-couple. Pre-eruption seismicity was dominated by normal faulting with east-west tension, whereas most post-eruption events were reverse faulting with east-west compression. The misfit angle between observed slip vectors and those derived theoretically from the regional (i.e., background) stress pattern is used to evaluate the deviation of the local stress field, or the stress perturbation related to volcanic activity. The moving average of misfit angles tended to exceed 90° before the eruption, and showed a marked decrease immediately after the eruption. This indicates that during the precursory period the local stress field beneath Mt. Ontake was rotated by stress perturbations caused by the inflation of magmatic/hydrothermal fluids. Post-eruption events of reverse faulting acted to shrink the volcanic edifice after expulsion of volcanic ejecta, controlled by the regional stress field. The misfit angle is a good indicator of the state of volcanic activity. The monitoring method by using this indicator is applicable to other volcanoes and may contribute to the mitigation of volcanic hazards.