The frequency of explosive volcanic eruptions in Southeast Asia - PubMed (original) (raw)

The frequency of explosive volcanic eruptions in Southeast Asia

Patrick L Whelley et al. Bull Volcanol. 2015.

Abstract

There are ~750 active and potentially active volcanoes in Southeast Asia. Ash from eruptions of volcanic explosivity index 3 (VEI 3) and smaller pose mostly local hazards while eruptions of VEI ≥ 4 could disrupt trade, travel, and daily life in large parts of the region. We classify Southeast Asian volcanoes into five groups, using their morphology and, where known, their eruptive history and degassing style. Because the eruptive histories of most volcanoes in Southeast Asia are poorly constrained, we assume that volcanoes with similar morphologies have had similar eruption histories. Eruption histories of well-studied examples of each morphologic class serve as proxy histories for understudied volcanoes in the class. From known and proxy eruptive histories, we estimate that decadal probabilities of VEI 4-8 eruptions in Southeast Asia are nearly 1.0, ~0.6, ~0.15, ~0.012, and ~0.001, respectively.

Keywords: Eruption probability; Global Volcano Program; Large magnitude explosive volcanic eruptions; Southeast Asia; Volcanic explosivity index; Volcano morphology.

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Figures

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

Locations of all 744 active and potentially active volcanoes in Southeast Asia (red triangles) and transportation pathways in the region. Solid lines are flight lines (after Johnson and Casadevall and Casadevall et al. 1999), dashed lines are cargo shipping routes (after Kaluza et al. 2010). Population data are from the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN 2014)

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

Volcano classification flowchart that illustrates the three-step classification scheme we used to differentiate volcanoes by morphology (step 1 and 3) and recent eruption activity (step 2). In step 2, stratovolcanoes that have >2 VEI 1 or 2 eruptions in past decade and average >8 emission events per year of 0.8 kt/day of SO2 since 1979 as tabulated by Aerocom and collected by TOMS, COSPEC, and ONEMI and classified as open-vent stratocones. Plugged-up stratocones have not erupted in the past decade or have insufficient SO2 emissions

Fig. 3

Fig. 3

Volcano class examples and details. a Mayon volcano (an open-vent stratocone), photograph from NASA/STS083, b Gede volcano (a semi-plugged stratocone) in Terra SAR-X scene: TSX1_SAR__MGD_RE___SC_S_SRA_20100218T110851_20100218T110913, c Pinatubo volcano (a well-plugged stratocone), image from DigitalGlobe and GeoEye, d Tambora volcano (a large caldera), NASA/ASTER image L1B_20030729022755_3B (in the visual spectrum), e Toba Caldera (a large caldera) oblique visualization of DigitalGlobe images and NASA/SRTM topography from Google Earth. Notice the variety of remote sensing data types that are useful for identifying volcanic features. Idealized sketches of f an open-vent stratocone, g semi-plugged stratocone, and h well-plugged stratocone, show key morphologic features of the volcano classes

Fig. 4

Fig. 4

A map of active and potentially active volcanoes of Southeast Asia. Colors indicate the volcanoes’ classification

Fig. 5

Fig. 5

Apparent eruption frequency (f e), solid lines calculated at 7 time intervals using eruption statistics from Japan and Southeast Asia. The decrease in eruption frequency over time illustrates incompleteness of the data. Dashed lines represent an approximation of the actual eruption frequency (F e)

Fig. 6

Fig. 6

VEI profile (frequency of eruptions per volcano per 100 years vs. VEI) for a typical volcano within each volcano morphologic class. Whiskers represent 90 % confidence interval standard error about the mean frequency. These same data are shown in Table 3

Fig. 7

Fig. 7

Comparison of average Japanese volcano eruption frequencies (in eruptions per century) for eruptions from year 0 to 2010. Gray bars represent volcanoes that have erupted since 1800 and white bars are volcanoes that have not. “_n_” values indicate the number of eruptions represented in each bar. The upper diagram (a) is for VEI 3 eruptions; the lower diagram (b) is for VEI ≥ 4 eruptions. Standard deviation whiskers indicate the uncertainty of estimates and thus statistical significance of any difference in histogram box height. In both comparisons (a and b), the whiskers overlap indicating that the samples are statistically indistinguishable

Fig. 8

Fig. 8

Age-specific eruption rates for VEI 4–8 eruptions derived from 142 eruption records. Rates for VEI 7 and 8 are added together. The hazard function for VEI 4 decreases sharply after 1000 years of repose; that for higher VEI’s decreases sharply after 10,000 years

Fig. 9

Fig. 9

Time-dependent eruption probability curves for Southeast Asia (solid lines) and 95 % confidence interval standard error (dashed lines)

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