Matched-filter Detection of Microseismicity Around the Eruption of the 2018 Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii

Hui Huang, & Lingsen Meng

Published August 15, 2018, SCEC Contribution #8788, 2018 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #060

The eruption of the Kilauea volcano started on April 30th, 2018, followed by widespread lava flows along the Southwest and East rift zones. Micro-seismicity analysis is important for identifying underground magma movement before the eruption. Here, we employ a template matching method to detect the small seismic events that are missing in the local Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) catalog. The template events are relocated using the double-difference method. We detect additional 3294 M >= 1 events within ~30 days before the eruption, ~10 times more than the HVO catalog. The result highlights the different temporal evolution between shallow (< 4 km) and deep (~4-12 km) seismicity. The total number of deep seismicity is about twice that of the shallow seismicity. But the deep seismicity is characterized by two major episodes starting ~18.5 and ~13 days before the eruption, both lasting less than 1 day. The deep cluster became almost quiet after the second episode while the shallow seismicity started to accelerate at ~8.5 days before the eruption, with a duration of ~6.5 days. The deep events are located below the Kilauea crater while the shallow events are aligned with the Upper Southwest and Upper East rift zones. The episodic activation of deep seismicity may be indicators of movement of pressurized magma, feeding the shallow reservoir and triggering prolonged shallow seismicity. This observed spatio-temporal pattern of deep and shallow seismicity may be an early precursor of the volcanic eruption.

Citation
Huang, H., & Meng, L. (2018, 08). Matched-filter Detection of Microseismicity Around the Eruption of the 2018 Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii. Poster Presentation at 2018 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Seismology