Preliminary Result of The Influence of Earthquake Stress Change and The Implication for Soputan Volcano and Lokon Volcano

Abstract

On February 6, 2016, an eruption occurred on the Northern Sulawesi arm, particularly Soputan volcano. One day earlier, Lokon volcano located close to Soputan volcano was decreased its status from standby to alert level by the Center for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation (CVGHM). The different reactions of two volcanoes proposed the question why the increment activity just happened in Soputan volcano. This uniqueness made us to suggest that static stress of earthquake may control the magmatic systems. We investigate here the earthquake-volcanism interaction through static stress changes by using Coulomb failure stress associated with an earthquake occurred in the Northern Molluca Sea on 25 November 2015. We slice the same dip for the each region in vertical cross sections. Therefore, the Coulomb failure stress pattern can be investigated beneath the study area. Our results suggest that Coulomb failure stress was increased by 0.3 × 10-3 to 0.4 × 10-3 bar below the Soputan’s region. Lokon’s region, the stress was reduced by -0.1 × 10-3 to -0.4 × 10-3 bar. The positive change may perturb magma overpressure leading to eruption and promoted volcanic earthquakes. The situation was very different that Lokon volcano ran into reduction activity and volcanic earthquakes were discourage due to stress shadow. We show that the difference volcanic response were likely controlled by static stress of the earthquake.