Special issue “The phreatic eruption of Mt. Ontake volcano in 2014”

Preparatory and precursory processes leading up to the 2014 phreatic eruption of Mount Ontake, Japan

We analyzed seismicity linked to the 2014 phreatic eruption of Mount Ontake, Japan, on 27 September 2014. We first relocated shallow volcano tectonic (VT) earthquakes and long-period (LP) events from August to September 2014. By applying a matched-filter technique to continuous waveforms using these relocated earthquakes, we detected numerous additional micro-earthquakes beneath the craters. Th...

Ten-year helium anomaly prior to the 2014 Mt Ontake eruption

Mt Ontake in central Japan suddenly erupted on 27(th) September 2014, killing 57 people with 6 still missing. It was a hydro-volcanic eruption and new magmatic material was not detected. There were no precursor signals such as seismicity and edifice inflation. It is difficult to predict hydro-volcanic eruptions because they are local phenomena that only affect a limited area surrounding the exp...

Special Issue of Iran NanoSafety Congress 2014 (INSC 2014)

Monitoring eruption activity using temporal stress changes at Mount Ontake volcano.

Volcanic activity is often accompanied by many small earthquakes. Earthquake focal mechanisms represent the fault orientation and slip direction, which are influenced by the stress field. Focal mechanisms of volcano-tectonic earthquakes provide information on the state of volcanoes via stresses. Here we demonstrate that quantitative evaluation of temporal stress changes beneath Mt. Ontake, Japa...

Overpressurized fluids drive microseismic swarm activity around Mt. Ontake volcano, Japan

Microseismic swarm activity has taken place since 1976 around Mt. Ontake, the second highest stratovolcano in Japan. This activity is thought to be linked to high pore-fluid pressure in the vicinity of the volcano. We analyzed well-constrained focal mechanism solutions of microseismicity to re-estimate the 3-D pore-fluid pressure field driving vigorous swarm activity around Mt. Ontake. Pore-flu...