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Relationship between volcanic ash fallouts and seismic tremor: quantitative assessment of the 2015 eruptive period at Cotopaxi volcano, Ecuador

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Abstract

Understanding the relationships between geophysical signals and volcanic products is critical to improving real-time volcanic hazard assessment. Thanks to high-frequency sampling campaigns of ash fallouts (15 campaigns, 461 samples), the 2015 Cotopaxi eruption is an outstanding candidate for quantitatively comparing the amplitude of seismic tremor with the amount of ash emitted. This eruption emitted a total of ~1.2E + 9 kg of ash (~8.6E + 5 m3) during four distinct phases, with masses ranging from 3.5E + 7 to 7.7E + 8 kg of ash. We compare the ash fallout mass and the corresponding cumulative quadratic median amplitude of the seismic tremor and find excellent correlations when the dataset is divided by eruptive phase. We use scaling factors based on the individual correlations to reconstruct the eruptive process and to extract synthetic Eruption Source Parameters (daily mass of ash, mass eruption rate, and column height) from the seismic records. We hypothesize that the change in scaling factor through time, associated with a decrease in seismic amplitudes compared to ash emissions, is the result of a more efficient fragmentation and transport process. These results open the possibility of feeding numerical models with continuous geophysical data, after adequate calibration, in order to better characterize volcanic hazards during explosive eruptions.

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Acknowledgments

Field campaigns for this study were funded by the project SENPLADES. Seismic data came from the JICA seismic network. This research has been conducted in the context of the Laboratoire Mixte International “Séismes et Volcans dans les Andes du Nord” of IRD. This work is the contribution n°2 of the project “Grupo de Investigación sobre la Ceniza Volcánica en Ecuador”. The authors thank the personnel of IGEPN, in particular those who participated to the field campaigns. Comments from D. Pyle, T. Nishimura, and an anonymous reviewer greatly improved a first version of this paper. We thank two anonymous reviewers and J. Taddeucci for their constructive comments which helped improving this paper.

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  1. Escuela Politécnica Nacional, Instituto Geofísico, Ladrón de Guevara E11-253 y Andalucía, 6to piso ed. Ing. Civil, Quito, Ecuador

    Benjamin Bernard, Antonio Proaño, Silvana Hidalgo, Francisco Vásconez, Stephen Hernandez & Mario Ruiz

  2. Laboratoire Magmas et Volcans, Université Blaise Pascal–CNRS–IRD, OPGC, 5, Rue Kessler, 63038, Clermont-Ferrand, France

    Jean Battaglia

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  1. Benjamin Bernard
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Correspondence to Benjamin Bernard.

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Editorial responsibility: J. Taddeucci

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Bernard, B., Battaglia, J., Proaño, A. et al. Relationship between volcanic ash fallouts and seismic tremor: quantitative assessment of the 2015 eruptive period at Cotopaxi volcano, Ecuador. Bull Volcanol 78, 80 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00445-016-1077-5

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