A low-cost method applicable worldwide for remotely mapping lava dome growth

Abstract

Lava dome growth and collapse represents both a significant hazard, as it can trigger pyroclastic density currents, and a monitoring challenge, limiting monitoring to a few known active volcanoes. Here, I propose a new differencing technique based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) amplitude images to quantify the extent of lava dome growth. This differencing technique, which is both low cost and can be utilized worldwide, is applied to SAR amplitude images at Mount St. Helens and validated using 2004–2008 aerial photography observations. Difference of amplitude images accurately characterize the dome growth location. The low ground resolution of the 2004–2008 SAR data leads to underestimation by 10 to 15% of the dome extent, but the accuracy of this method will increase with the improved resolution of current and future SAR missions. Amplitude images are a low-level SAR product available from all SAR satellites, mostly freely, making the proposed method ideal for systematic, low-cost monitoring of lava dome growth worldwide with minimum processing required.