Long period and very long period events at Mt. Etna volcano: Characteristics, variability and causality, and implications for their sources

Abstract

Almost 50,000 long period (LP) events were recorded at Mt. Etna from November 2003 to May 2006. We analysed these events, as well as very long period (VLP) events which were associated with some of them. During some intervals the spectral and wavefield features of LP events remained steady, with significant changes occurring between the intervals. Based on the times of the changes, we distinguish five different sub-periods. In particular, during sub-period III (June–November 2005) the wavefield at the stations nearest to the summit area was composed of P waves. Locations for 150 LP events occurring in sub-period III, determined using radial semblance, changed, at the same time as the events' spectral features changed. It was during this sub-period that many of the LP events were associated with VLP events. Based on similarity of the waveforms, we distinguished two families of VLP events, with gradually evolving waveforms. The two families are located in slightly different places, but near the sources of the LP events. The change between the families occurred at the same time as the spectra of the LP events changed. Finally the source of the VLP events was investigated by performing complete waveform moment tensor inversion of stacks of the two families. Synthetic Green's functions for the full moment tensor were calculated for a homogeneous half-space. For both families, the source region with the highest variance reduction lies approximately beneath the active craters, at 500 m below the altitudes of the stations. The solutions for both families are very similar with sources that are between 60 and 70% isotropic. Attempts to determine deviatoric moment tensors produced consistently poorer fits. The remaining energy is poorly constrained and is likely to be noise. In conclusion, these results highlight changes in the LP and VLP events at Mt. Etna over time, and the causal relationship between them.