Trends in volcano seismology: 2010 to 2020 and beyond

Abstract

Volcano seismology has been fundamental to our current understanding of crustal magma migration and eruption. The increasing availability of portable seismic networks with the creative use of seismic sources and ambient noise has led to a better understanding of the volcanic structure of many volcanoes and is producing increasingly detailed images of the volcanic subsurface. The past decade (2010-2020) has seen advances in our understanding of seismic sources under and surrounding volcanoes through precise locations, and through analysis of source mechanisms from seismic signals that are more varied and smaller in magnitude, reaching beyond traditional techniques. In tandem with continued research on fundamental physics-based understanding of volcano-seismic sources, new advances in computational analyses including machine learning methods will push our understanding of volcanic processes into the future. Incorporation of multidisciplinary geophysical observations (especially infrasound) has become commonplace, and our understanding of infrasound propagation and sources will feed back into our ability to monitor ongoing eruptions and surficial mass movements. Open-source codes will permit widespread evaluation and adoption of new methodologies for volcano-seismic analysis and inversion. Combined with quantitative and conceptual source models using improved structural constraints, these new methodologies will better characterize the range of volcano-seismic signal evolution scenarios and hold promise for creating better short-term forecasts. Finally, permanent instrumentation is available on an expanding range of volcanoes, and open data policies are increasingly making these data available to the scientific community in near real time.