Surface Displacement Measurement from Remote Sensing Images

8Volcanology: The Crucial Contribution of Surface Displacement Measurements from Space for Understanding and Monitoring Volcanoes

Virginie PINEL¹, Fabien ALBINO¹, Grace BATO² and Paul LUNDGREN²

¹ISTerre, Grenoble, France

²NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA

8.1. Introduction

Eight hundred million people currently live within a radius of 100 km around a volcano which has erupted in the last 10,000 years (Brown et al. 2015). This means that around 10% of the global population may be directly affected by a volcanic eruption. The most explosive eruptions, producing the highest volumes, are the most lethal; these are characterized by a volcanic explosivity index (VEI) (Newhall et al. 1982) greater than or equal to 4. Deaths generally result from pyroclastic flows: rock fragments suspended in hot gas flowing down the slopes of the volcano at speed. Secondary phenomena, such as lahars, which are mudflows triggered by volcanic activity, or tsunamis also have the potential to cause loss of life on a significant scale (Voight 1990; Syamsidik et al. 2020). The consequences of volcanic activity in terms of human casualties have been significantly attenuated over the last few centuries with the development of modern volcanology (Auker et al. 2013). Volcanic eruptions cannot be prevented, but it is possible to evacuate the neighboring population in time (Surono et al. 2012), as precursors can often be observed before magma reaches the surface. ...