Development of Integrated Seismic, Geodetic and Volcanic Gas Surveillance Instrumentation for Volcanic Research

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0116577KyleThis award, provided by the Office of Polar Programs, the Division of Earth Sciences, and the Office of Integrative Activities at NSF, supports development of an integrated instrument package for surveillance of volcanic gas, seismic activity, and elevation change. Seismic and geodetic methods are the principal tools used to monitor volcanoes, as these have been shown to be the most useful means of forecasting volcanic eruptions through the remote sensing of deviatoric stress release and intruding and withdrawing mass fluxes of magma. During the past 10 years, technological advances have resulted in a new generation of instrumentation and data acquisition methods in both seismology and geodesy. This collaborative project involving NM Tech researchers, staff from UNAVCO, and Guralp Systems will develop and deploy a low-power cost-effective real-time integrated instrument package of seismic, geodetic and environmental sensors primarily for monitoring the activity at active volcanoes and in tectonically active areas. The Integrated Surveillance Instrumentation (ISI) stations that will be developed and installed under this project are intended to have low power requirements (approximately 2 watts) and to run unattended for periods of up to 12 months under the harshest of environmental conditions. The plan calls for deployment of 5 ISI stations at Mt. Erebus and one in New Mexico. At Mt Erebus, the project will monitor on-going volcanic activity associated with the persistent anorthoclase phonolite magma lake. The NM station will monitor ongoing seismic and long-term deformational activity associated with the inflating Socorro magma body in the Rio Grande rift. The instrumentation developed should have wide application in both applied and basic earth science projects with the potential to contribute significantly to societal goals of better predicting volcanic and seismic natural hazards.