Routine Processing and Automatic Detection of Volcanic Ground Deformation Using Sentinel-1 InSAR Data: Insights from African Volcanoes

Abstract

Since the launch of Sentinel-1 mission, automated processing systems have been developed for near real-time monitoring of ground deformation signals. Here, we perform a regional analysis of 5 years over 64 volcanic centres located along the East African Rift System (EARS). We show that the correction of atmospheric signals for the arid and low-elevation EARS volcanoes is less important than for other volcanic environments. We find that the amplitude of the cumulative displacements exceeds three times the temporal noise of the time series (3σ) for 16 of the 64 volcanoes, which includes previously reported deformation signals, and two new ones at Paka and Silali volcanoes. From a 5-year times series, uncertainties in rates of deformation are ∼0.1 cm/yr, whereas uncertainties associated with the choice of reference pixel are typically 0.3–0.6 cm/yr. We fit the time series using simple functional forms and classify seven of the volcano time series as ‘linear’, six as ‘sigmoidal’ and three as ‘hybrid’, enabling us to discriminate between steady deformation and short-term pulses of deformation. This study provides a framework for routine volcano monitoring using InSAR on a continental scale. Here, we focus on Sentinel-1 data from the EARS, but the framework could be expanded to include other satellite systems or global coverage.