Seismic characterisation of lahars at Volcán de Colima, Mexico

Abstract

Volcan de Colima is one of the most active volcanoes in Mexico, not only for its eruptive history, but also for its annual occurrence of lahars. This makes the volcano a natural laboratory for monitoring and studying lahar processes. Since 2011, monitoring instruments have been deployed along the highly active Montegrande ravine, with at least three lahar events per year. Here, we report the datasets of three events collected during the 2012 and 2013 seasons, then interpret the acquired data. An event classification scheme based on lahar magnitude, duration and seismic characteristics is presented to distinguish “single-pulse” events (SPEs) from “multi-pulse” events (MPE). SPEs lasted approximately 60 min, had average velocities of ~2 m/s and mean peak discharges of ~24 m3/s. MPEs endured for more than 3 h, reached mean velocities of ~4.5 m/s and peak discharges of ~60 m3/s (for block-rich surges). The seismic signal-analysis also allowed us to discriminate physical flow fluctuations within single lahars, i.e. between the arrival of block-rich fronts and subsequent variations in flow discharge. The exponential regression analysis showed a best fit, with correlation coefficients around 0.92 and exponential coefficients of ~0.01 s, for the block-rich fronts, with seismic amplitudes increasing from 4.8 × 10−4 to 2.3 × 10−3 m/s and frequency ranges from 10 to 20 Hz. The variations in flow discharge were distinguished by lower amplitudes of ~5.7 × 10−4 m/s than those of the block-rich fronts and with frequency ranges of 10–40 Hz. The results presented in this paper demonstrate that the seismic data of events allowed us to describe and discriminate among different flow types; these records are thus a useful investigation tool for lahar events that have a seismic record but are not observed directly. We propose that a seismic early warning system can be developed to help civil protection authorities in designing risk mitigation strategies.