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USGS1996

Observations of rapid-fire event tremor at Lascar volcano, Chile

During the Proyecto de Investigacio??n Sismolo??gica de la Cordillera Occidental (PISCO '94) in the Atacama desert of Northern Chile, a continuously recording broadband seismic station was installed to the NW of the currently active volcano, Lascar. For the month of April, 1994, an additional network of three, short period, three-component stations was deployed around the volcano to help discriminate its seismic signals from other local seismicity. During the deployment, the volcanic activity at Lascar appeared to be limited mainly to the emission of steam and SO2. Tremor from Lascar is a random, ??rapid-fire?? series of events with a wide range of amplitudes and a quasi-fractal structure. The tremor is generated by an ensemble of independent elementary sources clustered in the volcanic edifice. In the short-term, the excitation of the sources fluctuates strongly, while the long-term power spectrum is very stationary.

Annals of Geophysics↗

USGS1996

A preliminary survey of the broadband seismic wavefield at Puu Oo, the active vent of Kilauea volcano, Hawaii

The seismic wavefield near an active volcanic vent consists of superimposed signals in a wide range of frequency bands from sources inside and outside the volcano. To characterize the broadband wavefield near Puu Oo, we deployed a profile of three three-component broadband sensors in a 200 m long line about 1.5 km WSW of the active vent. During this period, Puu Oo maintained a constant, but very low level of activity. The digital data logger recorded the wavefield continuously in the frequency band between 0.01 and 40 Hz between June 25 and July 9, 1994. At the same time, local wind conditions along with air temperature and pressure were monitored by a portable digital weather station. On the basis of characteristic elements, such as waveform, spatial coherence between stations, particle motion and power spectra, the wavefield can be divided into three bands. The dominant signals in the frequency band between 0.01 and 0.1 Hz are not coherent among the stations. Their ground velocities correlate with the wind speed. The signals in the 0.1 to 0.5 Hz band are coherent across the profile and most probably represent a superposition of volcanic tremor and microseisms from the Pacific Ocean. Much of the energy above 0.5 Hz can be attributed to activity at the vent. Power spectra from recordings of the transverse components show complex peaks between 0.5 and 3 Hz which vary in amplitude due to site effects and distance. On the other hand, power spectra calculated from the radial components show a clearly periodic pattern of peaks at 1 Hz intervals for some time segments. A further remarkable feature of the power spectra is that they are highly stationary.

Hawaii↗