Characterization of seismic events during the 2009 eruption of Redoubt Volcano, Alaska

Seismic events were automatically detected and characterized throughout the 2009 eruption of Redoubt Volcano, Alaska on a single short period station located 3 km from the volcanic crater. A total of 126,789 individual events were identified from continuous recording of seismic data from January 1 to June 30 (average 29 events per hour) using a short-term average/long-term average detection algorithm. Nine metrics were computed for this suite of events including event duration, inter-event time, event rate, peak amplitude, peak-to-peak amplitude, root-mean-square (RMS) amplitude, peak frequency, center frequency, and frequency index. Eight swarms were identified with event rates exceeding 100 events per hour. The first two occurred in late January and are attributed to high amplitude spasmodic tremor. Five additional swarms were manually repicked including swarms on February 26–27, March 20–23, March 27, March 29, and April 2–4. Three of these swarms immediately preceded major explosions including March 20–23, March 27, and April 2–4. A final swarm on May 2–9 was re-picked using a correlation detection scheme. We identified 146 event families that occurred within this suite of selected events using a cross correlation technique. Seven explosions were each immediately preceded by one or more event families. Events from the dominant family during each of these periods was additionally re-picked using correlation detection. The procession of event metrics and occurrence of event families formed a complex distribution throughout the eruption. A single-station approach was used to gain a fine-scale view of variations in seismic behavior at Redoubt with a focus on potential indicators of impending explosions. These techniques may serve an important role in future real-time eruption monitoring efforts.