Abstract
An optimized configuration of the Robust Satellite Technique (RST) approach was developed within the framework of the ‘LAVA’ project. This project is funded by the Italian Department of Civil Protection and the Italian Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, with the aim to improve the effectiveness of satellite monitoring of thermal volcanic activity. This improved RST configuration, named RSTVOLC, has recently been implemented in an automatic processing chain that was developed to detect hot-spots in near real-time for Italian volcanoes. This study presents the results obtained for the Mount Etna eruption of July 14-24, 2006, using the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. To better assess the operational performance, the RSTVOLC results are also discussed in comparison with those obtained by MODVOLC, a well-established, MODIS-based algorithm for hot-spot detection that is used worldwide.
Highlights
The Robust Satellite Technique (RST) approach [Tramutoli 2007] is a multi-temporal scheme of satellite data analysis that was proposed to study and monitor active volcanoes [Pergola et al 2004]
Starting from the first Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) image that was available after the onset of the eruption, namely that acquired on July 15, 2006, at 01:35 GMT, volcanic hot-spots were detected by RSTVOLC with a good level of continuity, apart from some cloudy scenes where the target area was completely masked by weather clouds
Striping problems related to 15 noisy AQUA detectors [Salomonson and Appel 2006, NASA GSFC 2010] affected each daytime AQUA-MODIS overpass that was analyzed in this study (10 in total), which accounted for the main cause of differences in the hot-spot numbers detected by RSTVOLC and by MODVOLC
Summary
The Robust Satellite Technique (RST) approach [Tramutoli 2007] is a multi-temporal scheme of satellite data analysis that was proposed to study and monitor active volcanoes [Pergola et al 2004]. The Mount Etna eruption that occurred from July 14-24, 2006, was analyzed to test the RSTVOLC performance for the monitoring of thermal volcanic activity.
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