Efficient SOM’s Application to Seismic Fumarolic Tremor for the Detection of Anomalous Hydrothermal Activity in Campi Flegrei Volcano (Italy)

Abstract

In recent decades, the Campi Flegrei caldera (Italy) showed unrest characterized by increases in seismicity, ground uplift, and hydrothermal activity. Currently, the seismic and hydrothermal phenomena are mostly concentrated in the Solfatara–Pisciarelli area, which presents a wide fumarolic field and mud emissions. The main fumarole in Pisciarelli is associated with a boiling mud pool. Recently, episodes of a sudden increase in hydrothermal activity and expansion of mud and gas emissions occurred in this area. During these episodes, which occurred in December 2018 and September 2020, Short Duration Events (SDEs), related to the intensity of mud pool boiling, were recorded in the fumarolic seismic tremor. We applied a Self-Organizing Map (SOM) neural network to recognize the occurrence of SDEs in the fumarolic tremor of Campi Flegrei, which provides important information on the state of activity of the hydrothermal system and about the possible phreatic activity. Our method, based on an ad hoc feature extraction procedure, effectively clustered the seismic signals containing SDEs and separated them from those representing the normal fumarolic tremor. This result is useful for improving the monitoring of the Solfatara–Pisciarelli hydrothermal area which is a high-risk zone in Campi Flegrei.