4D map of the Kilauea summit shallow magmatic system constrained by InSAR time series and geometry-free inversions

Abstract:

The Kilauea volcano, Hawaii Island, is one of the most active volcanoes worldwide. Its complex system, including magma reservoirs and rift zones, provides a unique opportunity to investigate the dynamics of magma transport and supply. The models explaining the system are yet limited to the first order analytical solutions with fixed geometry. To obtain a 4D map of the volume changes at the Kilauea summit magmatic system (KSMS), we implement a novel geometry-free time-dependent inverse modeling scheme, using a distribution of point center of dilatations (PCDs). The model is constrained using high resolution surface deformation data, which are obtained through InSAR time series analysis of well populated SAR data sets acquired at two overlapping tracks of Envisat satellite during 2003 and 2011. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of the 4D maps of volume change identifies five major active reservoir beneath Kilauea caldera. The southern caldera reservoir (SCR) gains volume slowly till 2006 before its rapid inflation during 2006 – mid-2007, followed by deflation until the start of re-inflation in mid-2010. Other reservoirs show episodic temporal correlation and anti-correlation with SCR. We found that the top-down relation between reservoirs at the Kilauea summit is not necessarily valid at all time scales. Identifying statistically significant PCDs through Chi-square test, we develop and apply a boundary element modeling scheme to solve for the volume change time series and complex geometry of the summit magmatic system. Availability of such models allows realistic estimates of volume change and associated seismic hazard and enhance the forecast models.