Successes, Challenges and Opportunities in Using Waveform Cross-Correlation for Volcano Monitoring

Session: Waveform Cross-Correlation-Based Methods in Observational Seismology
Type: Oral
Date: 4/30/2020
Time: 09:30 AM
Room: 230 + 235
Description: 

Volcanoes produce repeating (i.e., highly correlated) earthquakes as part of their normal background seismicity and often at incredible rates prior to and during their eruptions. Research on many eruption datasets shows that using cross-correlation to build expanded catalogs and observing the behavior of individual families of events over time can provide valuable information about the volcano, such as its pressurization state, time to eruption and plumbing architecture. Among the many challenges for volcano observatories is finding a way to deploy techniques from the research realm in a rapid, automated and accessible manner while the volcano is in unrest. In this talk, we highlight the techniques and parameters from retrospective repeating earthquake analyses which show the most promise for near real-time monitoring (e.g., rate of new family creation, frequency content, repeater percentage of total seismicity). We will also discuss the current progress and challenges in implementing these techniques. In particular, we focus on the open-source code REDPy, its performance as a monitoring tool in the last five years and the path forward for improving it.

Presenting Author: Alicia J. Hotovec-Ellis

Authors