Identifying elements of the plumbing system beneath Kilauea Volcano, Hawaii, from the source locations of very-long-period signals

Abstract

We analyzed 16 seismic events recorded by the Hawaiian broad-band seismic network at Kilauea Volcano during the period September 9–26, 1999. Two distinct types of event are identified based on their spectral content, very-long-period (VLP) waveform, amplitude decay pattern and particle motion. We locate the VLP signals with a method based on analyses of semblance and particle motion. Different source regions are identified for the two event types. One source region is located at depths of ∼1 km beneath the northeast edge of the Halemaumau pit crater. A second region is located at depths of ∼8 km below the northwest quadrant of Kilauea caldera. Our study represents the first time that such deep sources have been identified in VLP data at Kilauea. This discovery opens the possibility of obtaining a detailed image of the location and geometry of the magma plumbing system beneath this volcano based on source locations and moment tensor inversions of VLP signals recorded by a permanent, large-aperture broad-band network.