The use of 6DOF measurement in volcano seismology – A first application to Stromboli volcano

Abstract

Volcano seismology, while its value for surveillance of an active volcano is undebatable, is a very demanding field when it comes to station deployment, maintenance, and finally interpreting the measurements. Most valuable in the past was the deployment of arrays of sensors to evaluate the properties of the entire wavefield in order to classify, locate, and estimate the dominant mechanism of the corresponding sources. While very beneficial, an array of seismographs is very hard to maintain in a permanent installation at an active volcano. With the advent of new instrumentation based on fiber optic technology such as Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) with fiber optic cables as well as Fiber-Optic Gyroscopes (FOG) the measurement of deformation and rotation, i.e., the gradient of the wavefield is feasible. The advantage of the FOG instrumentation with respect to DAS lies in the portability and ease of deployment, which is very similar to standard deployments of traditional seismometers. During a field campaign in summer 2018 we were able to install three FOGs together with classical broadband seismometers in close proximity to the active vents of Stromboli volcano (Italy). We show that with this new six-degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) measurement we are able to analyze the wavefield composition, a property normally reserved for array(s) of seismic sensors. As a first result, we can support earlier array-derived findings that a large portion of the wavefield at Stromboli volcano is formed by SV- and SH- type waves. We also present first locations of these signals facilitating the polarization properties of the combined measurement of gyroscopes and seismometers. They emphasize the benefit of recording wavefield gradients. In addition to these array-like results, the 6DOF recordings show a clear separation of at least three distinct groups of volcanic events of which two are already known and one represents a jetting event that appears nearly invisible for classical seismometers. However, rotational motions - or more general - gradients of the wavefield experience severe distortions by local velocity fluctuations and topography significantly complicating the application of 6DOF techniques at activate volcanoes.