Stochastic models for earthquake triggering of volcanic eruptions

Abstract

Many accounts, anecdotal and statistical, have noted a causal effect on volcanic eruptions from large, not too distant, earthquakes. Physical mechanisms have been proposed that explain how small static stress changes, or larger transient dynamic stress changes, can have observable effects on a volcano. While only ∼0.4% of eruptions appear to be directly triggered within a few days of an earthquake, these physical mechanisms also imply the possibility of delayed triggering. In the few regional studies conducted, data issues (selection bias and scarcity, inhomogeneity, and cleaning of data) have tended to obscure any clear signal. Using a perturbation technique, we first show that the Indonesian volcanic region possesses no statistically significant coupling for the region as a whole. We then augment a number of point process models for eruption onsets by a time‐, distance‐, and earthquake magnitude–dependent triggering term and apply this to the individual volcanoes. This method weighs both positive and negative (i.e., absence of eruptions following an earthquake) evidence of triggering. Of 35 volcanoes with at least three eruptions in the study region, seven (Marapi, Talang, Krakatau, Slamet, Ebulobo, Lewotobi, and Ruang) show statistical evidence of triggering over varying temporal and spatial scales, but only after the internal state of the volcano is accounted for. This confirms that triggering is fundamentally a property of the internal magma plumbing of the volcano in question and that any earthquake can potentially “advance the clock” toward a future eruption. This is further supported by the absence of any dependence on triggering of the eruption size