P. J. Mouginis-Mark, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, University of Hawaii, 2525 Correa Road, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA. Telephone 1-808-9563147. Facsimile1-808-9566322.
pmm@kahana.pgd.hawaii.eduP. W. Francis, Department of Earth Sciences,The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom. Telephone 44-908-653012. Facsimile 44-908-653744.
P.W.Francis@open.ac.ukS.K. Rowland, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, University of Hawaii, 2525 Correa Road, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA. Telephone 1-808-956-3150. Facsimile 1-808-9566322.
scott@baby.pgd.hawaii.eduTo promote the use of field, airborne, and spaceborne remote-sensing techniques for the analysis of volcanic eruptions and the mitigation of volcanic hazards.
640 people are on the Commission mailing list. These individuals have a broad range of volcanological expertise including physical volcanology, atmospheric sciences, and remote sensing. There is no charge for annual membership. In addition, a Home Page is maintained on the World-Wide Web. About 400 people access this home page every week and each user on averagelinks to 11 Web pages. More than 77,000 pages have been accessed over the last four months.
A newsletter is published four times each year in conjunction with the Hawaii Center for Volcanology (HCV). Remote-sensing news includes discussions of up-coming space missions, results from recent flights, ideas for the use of new remote-sensing instrumentation, and descriptions of how to access these data sets over electronic networks. Other information in the newsletter includes descriptions of the physical volcanology and petrology of Hawaiian volcanoes, and summaries of abstracts submitted to conferences by HCV members.
One of the main space-based remote sensing studies of volcanoes will be conducted from the NASA Earth Observing System (EOS), which will fly in the 1998 - 2015 timeframe. You can find lots of information on how EOS will use remote sensing data to study lava flows, volcanic gases, eruption plumes and volcanic hazards at the following address: http://www.geo.mtu.edu/eos/ The Home Page also contains extensive information on current and future spacecraft thatcan be used to study volcanoes, an extensive bibliography on remote sensing in volcanology, hundreds of images of different volcanoes and remote-sensing experiments, and computer software packages that can be downloaded free of charge.
A one-day workshop on Remote sensing in volcanology was run at the IAVCEI General Assembly in Canberra, Australia, in September 1993. Computer software, example images, and tutorial materials were distributed.The Commission was able to facilitate the collection of data for 12 out of the 15 IAVCEI Decade volcanoes (see above) during April and October 1994 missions as part of the SIR-C/X-SAR Space Shuttle radar mission. Dozens of other volcanoes were imaged, including many in a manner that will allow the production of high-resolution digital topographic maps to be made.
A particularly exciting recent discovery involves the use of radar interferometry to derive high resolution (12-25 m spatial, about 5 m vertical) topographic maps of volcanoes from two radar images. Better still, the use of a third radar image allows surface deformation at less than 1 cm scale to be mapped over areas as large as hundred of square kilometres. Many of the SIR-C/X-SAR data sets permit these topographic and deformation studies to be attempted for volcanoes around the world. A major activity for the Remote Sensing Commission over the next few years likely will be the reduction and interpretation of these data in coordination with local volcanologists and officials at numerous sites.
We have created Home Pages on the World Wide Web for the electronic dissemination of volcano information. This Home Page is maintained by Joy Crisp at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California, USA.
joy@glassy.jpl.nasa.govA one-day workshop on the use SAR Interferometry for topographic mapping and the assessment of volcanic and earthquake hazards was held in Tokyo, Japan, December 1994.
The broader distribution of remote-sensing images of volcanoes is our highest goal. In particular, a compendium of data from the Space Shuttle radar will be made and placed on the World Wide Web. Other remote- sensing data sets for Kilauea volcano and Mount St. Helens will be placed on the Internet.
A new collaborative effort between remote-sensing volcanologists in the USA and Japan is being planned, and should start in 1995. We hope to study the topography and deformation of Unzen, Sakurajima, and Mauna Loa (all Decade volcanoes), and Kilauea, using radar interferometry. Collaborations with other IAVCEI Commissions on the analysis of Decade volcanoes (such as at the Taal Workshop) and the role of volcanism on climate, are expected to grow also. In particular, we see the strong need to interact with other IAVCEI Commissions in order to fully understand these new data sets as more of the topographic and deformation data from the radar-interferometry experiments are reduced. These aspects of the remote sensing of volcanoes were highlighted in an all-Union Session at the IUGG Symposium held in Boulder, Colorado, USA, in July 1995.
