Significance of Electromagnetic Surveys at Active Volcanoes: Toward Evaluating the Imminence of Wet Eruptions

Abstract

The detection capability of various anomalous phenomena preceding volcanic eruptions has considerably progressed as the geophysical monitoring networks have become denser and multi-disciplinary. However, current eruption forecasting techniques, from a practical perspective, still have much scope for improvement because they largely depend on empirical techniques. In the past decade, three-dimensional modeling based on the electromagnetic sounding methods such as magnetotellurics (MT) have become a practical choice, and its recent applications to active volcanic fields has revealed certain common features among volcanoes. Information about the resistivity structure, especially in ‘wet’ volcanic fields, is useful for the provisional screening of the eruption potential from the viewpoint of the subsurface structure, and, thus, may contribute to the evaluation of eruption imminence in a broad sense. In this study, for evaluation purposes, we present the roles and possible further applications of the subsurface resistivity structure studies by demonstrating the preliminary results and interpretations of an MT survey that we performed in the Kuttara Volcanic Group, northern Japan.