Monitoring Mount Sinabung in Indonesia Using Multi-Temporal InSAR

Abstract

Sinabung volcano in Indonesia was formed due to the subduction between the Eurasian and Indo-Australian plates along the Pacific Ring of Fire. After being dormant for about 400 years, Sinabung volcano erupted on the 29th of August, 2010 and most recently on the 1st of November, 2016. We measured the deformation of Sinabung volcano using Advanced Land Observing Satellite/Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (ALOS/PALSAR) interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) images acquired from February 2007 to January 2011. Based on multi-temporal InSAR processing, we mapped the ground surface deformation before, during, and after the 2010 eruption with time-series InSAR technique. During the 3 years before the 2010 eruption, the volcano inflated at an average rate of ~1.7 cm/yr with a markedly higher rate of 6.6 cm/yr during the 6 months prior to the 2010 eruption. The inflation was constrained to the top of the volcano. From the 2010 eruption to January 2011, the volcano subsided by approximately 3 cm (~6 cm/yr). We interpreted that the inflation was due to magma accumulation in a shallow reservoir beneath Sinabung. The deflation was attributed to magma withdrawal from the shallow reservoir during the eruption as well as thermo-elastic compaction of erupted material. This result demonstrates once again the utility of InSAR for volcano monitoring.