������̳

Alaska-developed volcano monitoring system will expand across U.S.

A new radar-based volcano monitoring system developed by the University of Alaska ������̳ and U.S. Geological Survey will expand across the U.S. and beyond.

The expansion, funded by NASA, could lead to earlier detection of volcanic unrest.

The at UAF has been using a prototype of this system, named VolcSARvatory, since early 2022. Its usefulness was immediately apparent when a swarm of earthquakes occurred at long-quiet Mount Edgecumbe volcano, near Sitka, Alaska, on April 11, 2022. 

VolcSARvatory uses interferometric synthetic aperture radar, or InSAR, to detect ground movement changes as small as 1 centimeter. It works by combining two or more satellite radar images of the same area taken at different times. Long-duration surface changes can be chronicled by collecting repeated images to build a time series of data from a single location.

Franz Meyer, a remote sensing professor with the Geophysical Institute and the UAF College of Natural Science and Mathematics, said expanding the system to all USGS volcano observatories in collaboration with USGS Volcano Science Center colleagues will provide a consistent approach to monitoring active volcanoes.

Meyer is also chief scientist for the institute’s Alaska Satellite Facility, which co-developed the VolcSARvatory prototype system with the Alaska Volcano Observatory and researchers in the Geophysical Institute’s remote sensing group.

“Technology has evolved to a point that we can now make the system operational at a national scale,” Meyer said. 

The VolcSARvatory system streamlines satellite radar analysis in a cloud computing environment, which  allows the processing and analysis of vast volumes of data in only a handful of days. The process would otherwise require several weeks. 

The system proved valuable in studying Mount Edgecumbe’s unexpected activity.

In 2022, a team from the Alaska Volcano Observatory and Alaska Satellite Facility began analyzing the previous 7 1/2 years of Mount Edgecumbe data using the VolcSARvatory prototype and found deformation began 3 1/2 years earlier, in August 2018. Subsequent computer modeling indicated an intrusion of new magma caused the ground deformation.