Spatiotemporal evolution of shallow seismic velocities associated with the 2024 East Rift Zone eruption at Kīlauea Volcano

Dense temporary seismic nodal arrays offer new opportunities for ambient noise interferometry, enabling spatially resolved imaging of subsurface processes at scales inaccessible to permanent networks. Here we demonstrate this potential in a volcanic setting, exploiting the 2024 unrest at Kīlauea volcano, . By inverting velocity changes across 2667 station pairs from both a temporary nodal deployment and the permanent Hawaiian Volcano Observatory network, we reconstruct the full spatio-temporal evolution of the unrest, capturing the pre-, co-, and post-eruptive sequence. The resulting velocity changes are validated against Global Navigation Satellite System and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar measurements, and conceptual volumetric strain models. Within our study period, we find no significant influence of precipitation and instead we identify three primary mechanisms driving velocity changes: magma reservoir dynamics, including inflation/deflation at the summit reservoirs, dike intrusions indicating down-rift magma transport, and transient changes related to earthquake rupturing. While disentangling effects of overlapping deformation sources remain challenging, our seismic velocity anomalies from distinct processes closely mirror independent geodetic observations. This close alignment indicates that, in the absence of strong environmental influences, high-resolution spatio-temporal velocity changes determined using dense networks can guide interpretations of subsurface strain in regions where geodetic measurements lack sufficient resolution.

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Publication Details

Journal
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Published
2026-10-14
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2026.120389
Primary Topic
Seismic Waves and Analysis
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Spatiotemporal evolution of shallow seismic velocities associated with the 2024 East Rift Zone eruption at Kīlauea Volcano

Marco Bagnardi, Stefan Wiemer, Alicia Rohnacher, Ninfa L. Bennington et al.
Earth and Planetary Science Letters
Seismic Waves and Analysis
article

Spatiotemporal evolution of shallow seismic velocities associated with the 2024 East Rift Zone eruption at Kīlauea Volcano

Marco Bagnardi, Stefan Wiemer, Alicia Rohnacher, Ninfa L. Bennington, Federica Lanza
article en

Abstract

Dense temporary seismic nodal arrays offer new opportunities for ambient noise interferometry, enabling spatially resolved imaging of subsurface processes at scales inaccessible to permanent networks. Here we demonstrate this potential in a volcanic setting, exploiting the 2024 unrest at Kīlauea volcano, . By inverting velocity changes across 2667 station pairs from both a temporary nodal deployment and the permanent Hawaiian Volcano Observatory network, we reconstruct the full spatio-temporal evolution of the unrest, capturing the pre-, co-, and post-eruptive sequence. The resulting velocity changes are validated against Global Navigation Satellite System and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar measurements, and conceptual volumetric strain models. Within our study period, we find no significant influence of precipitation and instead we identify three primary mechanisms driving velocity changes: magma reservoir dynamics, including inflation/deflation at the summit reservoirs, dike intrusions indicating down-rift magma transport, and transient changes related to earthquake rupturing. While disentangling effects of overlapping deformation sources remain challenging, our seismic velocity anomalies from distinct processes closely mirror independent geodetic observations. This close alignment indicates that, in the absence of strong environmental influences, high-resolution spatio-temporal velocity changes determined using dense networks can guide interpretations of subsurface strain in regions where geodetic measurements lack sufficient resolution.

Earth and Planetary Science LettersVol. 696
United States Geological Survey (US), Cascades Volcano Observatory (US), ETH Zurich (CH), Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (US), Swiss Seismological Service (CH)
Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung
Openalex Percentile: Top 17%
Seismic Waves and Analysis
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