DInSAR based Analysis of January 2020 Eruption of Fernandina Volcano, Galapagos

Abstract

Fernandina is the westernmost and the most active volcano in the Galapagos archipelago. It is a basaltic shield volcano with a summit caldera of dimension 5 x 6.5 km. Recently, the volcano erupted on January 12, 2020, preceded by a seismic shock of magnitude 4.7 at a depth of 5 km. The subsequent seismic activities have led to the formation of a circumferential fissure below the La Cumbre crater's eastern rim, at an elevation of 1.3-1.4 km. The lava flow has occurred down the flank to the sea through this fissure. This volcanic episode has continued up to 9 hours. The InSAR time series method is a multi-temporal InSAR technique used to detect slowly occurring deformations with a millimeter level of precision using a stack of SAR interferograms. In this paper, the Differential InSAR has been used to analyze Fernandina volcano's surface deformation due to this recent eruption. The interferograms of the volcano before, during, and after the eruption have been analyzed in detail using the freely available Sentinel 1 C- band datasets from 2019 December 17 to 2020 February 09. The integration of all these analyses gives an insight into the underground magma conduit system, the correlation between the magmatic and seismic activities, surface deformations, and the lava flow channels, which have been discussed in detail in this paper.