Kazuki Miyaoka

Detection of crustal deformation prior to the 2014 Mt. Ontake eruption by the stacking method

The phreatic eruption of Mt. Ontake in central Japan occurred in September 27, 2014. No obvious crustal deformation was observed prior to the eruption, and the magnitudes of other precursor phenomena were very small. In this study, we used the stacking method to detect crustal deformation prior to the eruption. The stacking method is a technique to improve the signal-to-noise ratio by stacking multiple records of crustal deformation. We succeeded in detecting a slight crustal deformation caused by a volume change in the shallow region beneath the volcano’s summit from 1xa0month prior to the eruption. We also detected a slight crustal deformation that may have been caused by a volume increase in the deep region from one and a half months before the eruption. The magnitude of the volume change in the shallow region did not differ significantly in the 2014 eruption compared to the volume change during the small Mt. Ontake eruption in 2007, and the volume change in the deep region was rather smaller in 2014 than in 2007.