Proceeding of the GNV Project Meeting: Development and application of remote sensing methods for the monitoring of active Italian volcanoes

Riassunto

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This volume of “Quaderni di Geofisica” collects the proceedings of the mid-term meeting of the GNV coordinated project “Development and application of remote sensing methods for the monitoring of active italian volcanoes” held on 24 and 25 January 2002 at Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia in Catania. The project was supported by Dipartimento di Protezione Civile in the frame of the GNV Program 2000-2003. This research acted as a joint project between Research Institutes and Universities with the aim of improving the application of remote sensing techniques for the study of volcanoes and their activity that, in recent years, had significantly grown thanks to the availability of new sensors and new techniques for data processing. Remote sensing, by its nature, represents an advantageous method to observe, in safety and over large and often inaccessible areas, dangerous natural phenomena such as volcanic eruptions. Various surveying techniques have been experimented using both passive (optical) as well as active (radar) sensors which operate above the scene at high (satellites) and low (planes and helicopters) altitudes. A number of these techniques are very suitable for a systematic surveillance of volcanoes having the capability of detecting phenomena directly or indirectly linked with their dynamics. This applications include the observation of altimetric variations and ground temperature as a consequence of intrusions of magmatic masses, morphological changes caused or induced by eruptive activity, mapping of erupted products spread over the land surface and/or in the atmosphere, and concentration of the some gas (SO2 and CO2) continuously emitted by volcanic plumes. The key point in the application of remote sensing for surveillance of active volcanoes lies in the time required to elaborate and interpret the data acquired by remote sensors. In this project we devised a number of remote sensing methods, among those already experimented by the scientific community, allowing the results to be available in a time span compatible with the requirements for monitoring precursor phenomena and eruptive events. The project described below is developed following five thematic Tasks aimed respectively to: the application of SAR Interferometry to ground deformation studies; the application of DTM to volcanology, the remote sensing of thermal anomalies from active volcanoes, the monitoring of eruptive clouds...