Abstract
Tracking the level of the lava lake in Halema‘uma‘u Crater, at the summit of Kīlauea Volcano, Hawai’i, is an essential part of monitoring the ongoing eruption and forecasting potentially hazardous changes in activity. We describe a simple automated image processing routine that analyzes continuously-acquired thermal images of the lava lake and measures lava level. The method uses three image segmentation approaches, based on edge detection, short-term change analysis, and composite temperature thresholding, to identify and track the lake margin in the images. These relative measurements from the images are periodically calibrated with laser rangefinder measurements to produce real-time estimates of lake elevation. Continuous, automated tracking of the lava level has been an important tool used by the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory since 2012 in real-time operational monitoring of the volcano and its hazard potential.
Highlights
The current summit eruption at Kīlauea Volcano began in March 2008 (Wilson et al 2008; Patrick et al 2013)
The importance of summit lava level extends beyond the summit region, as higher summit lava levels reflect increased pressure in the overall magmatic system within Kīlauea Volcano, and unusually high summit lava levels have preceded intrusions and/or the outbreak of new eruptive vents on Kīlauea’s rift zones (Rowland and Munro 1993; Patrick et al 2014, 2015; Orr et al 2015)
The image processing techniques we present are applied to images from a stationary, continuously operating thermal camera on the Halema‘uma‘u Crater rim (Patrick et al 2014)
Summary
The current summit eruption at Kīlauea Volcano began in March 2008 (Wilson et al 2008; Patrick et al 2013). It includes an active lava lake within the Overlook crater, which is within the larger Halema‘uma‘u Crater (Patrick et al 2013; Orr et al 2013) (Fig. 1). The importance of summit lava level extends beyond the summit region, as higher summit lava levels reflect increased pressure in the overall magmatic system within Kīlauea Volcano, and unusually high summit lava levels have preceded intrusions and/or the outbreak of new eruptive vents on Kīlauea’s rift zones (Rowland and Munro 1993; Patrick et al 2014, 2015; Orr et al 2015). Monitoring summit lava level is another important tool for judging the likelihood of potentially hazardous rift zone eruptive activity
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