Location of seismic events and eruptive fissures on the Piton de la Fournaise volcano using seismic amplitudes

Abstract

We present a method for locating the source of seismic events on Piton de la Fournaise. The method is based on seismic amplitudes corrected for station site effects using coda site amplification factors. Once corrected, the spatial distribution of amplitudes shows smooth and simple contours for many types of events, including rockfalls, long‐period events and eruption tremor. On the basis of the simplicity of these distributions we develop inversion methods for locating their origins. To achieve this, the decrease of the amplitude as a function of the distance to the source is approximated by the decay either of surface or body waves in a homogeneous medium. The method is effective for locating rockfalls, long‐period events, and eruption tremor sources. The sources of eruption tremor are usually found to be located at shallow depth and close to the eruptive fissures. Because of this, our method is a useful tool for locating fissures at the beginning of eruptions.