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Monitoring Seismo-volcanic and Infrasonic Signals at Volcanoes: Mt. Etna

Case Study

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DOI: 10.1007/s00024-012-0634-x

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Pure Appl. Geophys. 170 (2013), 1751–1771
 2012 Springer Basel
DOI 10.1007/s00024-012-0634-x
Monitoring Seismo-volcanic and Infrasonic Signals at Volcanoes: Mt. Etna Case Study
ANDREA CANNATA,1 GIUSEPPE DI GRAZIA,1 MARCO ALIOTTA,1 CARMELO CASSISI,2 PLACIDO MONTALTO,1
and DOMENICO PATANÈ1
Abstract—Volcanoes generate a broad range of seismo-volca-
nic and infrasonic signals, whose features and variations are often
closely related to volcanic activity. The study of these signals is
hence very useful in the monitoring and investigation of volcano
dynamics. The analysis of seismo-volcanic and infrasonic signals
requires specifically developed techniques due to their unique
characteristics, which are generally quite distinct compared with
tectonic and volcano-tectonic earthquakes. In this work, we
describe analysis methods used to detect and locate seismo-vol-
canic and infrasonic signals at Mt. Etna. Volcanic tremor sources
are located using a method based on spatial seismic amplitude
distribution, assuming propagation in a homogeneous medium. The
tremor source is found by calculating the goodness of the linear
regression fit (R2) of the log-linearized equation of the seismic
amplitude decay with distance. The location method for long-per-
iod events is based on the joint computation of semblance and R2
values, and the location method of very long-period events is based
on the application of radial semblance. Infrasonic events and tre-
mor are located by semblance–brightness- and semblance-based
methods, respectively. The techniques described here can also be
applied to other volcanoes and do not require particular network
geometries (such as arrays) but rather simple sparse networks.
Using the source locations of all the considered signals, we were
able to reconstruct the shallow plumbing system (above sea level)
during 2011.
Key words: Volcanic tremor, LP events, VLP events,
infrasound, Mt. Etna, source location.
1. Introduction
Volcanoes release seismic energy in a wide fre-
quency range from zero (static displacement) to a few
tens of Hz. Generally, two different groups of seismic
signals can be distinguished in volcanic areas
1
Osservatorio Etneo - Sezione di Catania, Istituto Nazionale
di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Catania, Italy. E-mail:
cannata@ct.ingv.it
2
Dipartimento di Matematica e Informatica, Università degli
studi di Catania, Catania, Italy.
Pure and Applied Geophysics
(CHOUET, 1996): the first, caused by processes origi-
nating in the solid Earth, is associated with shear
failure in volcanoes, and the related seismic events
are called volcano-tectonic (VT) earthquakes; the
second (hereafter called ‘‘seismo-volcanic signals’’)
is generated by processes involving fluids. These
events include long-period (LP) seismicity and vol-
canic tremor, which share the same spectral
components (0.2–2 s), and very long-period (VLP)
seismicity characterized by dominant periods of
2–100 s (OHMINATO et al., 1998). LP events are
characterized by emergent signal onset and lack of
clear S-wave arrivals. According to CHOUET (2003),
the source of LP events may be interpreted as oscil-
lations of a fluid-filled resonator in response to a
time-localized excitation, while VLP events are
assumed to be linked to mass movements, and to
represent inertial forces resulting from perturbations
in the flow of magma and gases through conduits
(e.g., UHIRA and TAKEO, 1994; KANESHIMA et al.,
1996). Features of seismo-volcanic signals and their
variations are often closely related to eruptive activ-
ity. For this reason, they are generally considered an
indicator of the internal state of activity of volcanoes
(NEUBERG, 2000). In addition to seismic signal stud-
ies, whose usefulness in monitoring and investigating
volcano dynamics is critical, analyses of infrasound
signals emitted by volcanoes have recently been
shown to provide additional constraints on the anal-
ysis of volcanic activity (e.g., RIPEPE et al., 2007;
MONTALTO et al., 2010; JOHNSON and RIPEPE, 2011;
FEE and MATOZA, 2012). Recent studies have dem-
onstrated how analysis of such signals can help to
reconstruct the shallowest portion of the plumbing
system (e.g., FEE et al., 2010; GOTO and JOHNSON,
2011). The unique characteristics of the seismo-
volcanic and infrasonic signals, differing from the
1752 A. Cannata et al.
tectonic and VT earthquakes in terms of both wave-
form and source mechanism, require new techniques
to investigate their features.
Volcanic tremor, LP events, VLP events, infra-
sonic events, and infrasonic tremor are observed at
Mt. Etna and monitored by the permanent seismic
and infrasonic networks run by the Istituto Nazio-
nale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Osservatorio
Etneo. During the last decade, the eruptive activity
of Mt. Etna has been characterized by both effusive
and explosive eruptions at the summit craters, as
well as at fissures opened on its flanks (e.g., ALLARD
et al., 2006; AIUPPA 2010). Currently, there are four
active craters at the summit of Mt. Etna: Voragine,
Bocca Nuova, Southeast Crater, and Northeast
Crater (hereafter referred to as VOR, BN, SEC, and
NEC, respectively; see inset in Fig. 1a). Lava
fountain activity during 2011–2012 took place at a
new crater, which opened at the base of SEC and
was named ‘‘new SEC’’ (hereafter referred to as
NSEC).
In this work, we describe the techniques applied at
Mt. Etna to detect and locate seismo-volcanic and
infrasonic signals.
2. Permanent Monitoring Networks
At Mt. Etna, the permanent seismic network, run
by the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia,
Osservatorio Etneo, comprises 33 broadband and 12
short-period stations. The analyses of seismo-volca-
nic signals are performed on the recordings of 19 of
these stations, each equipped with a broadband (40 s
cutoff period), three-component Trillium seismome-
ter (NanometricsTM) and acquired in real time at
sampling rate of 100 Hz (Fig. 1a).
The permanent infrasonic network comprises 10
stations located at distances ranging between *1 and
8 km from the center of the summit area (Fig. 1b).
Four stations are equipped with Monacor MC 2005
condenser microphones, with sensitivity of 80 mV/Pa
in the 1–20 Hz infrasonic band, while the others have
a GRASS 40AN microphone with a flat response with
sensitivity of 50 mV/Pa in the frequency range
0.3–20,000 Hz. The infrasonic signals are acquired at
sampling rate of 50 Hz.
Pure Appl. Geophys.
3. Seismo-Volcanic and Infrasonic Signals
At Mt. Etna, volcanic tremor, LP events, VLP
events, infrasonic events, and infrasonic tremor are
recorded. As an example, Figs. 2 and 3 show the
seismic and infrasonic signals recorded by EBEL
seismic and infrasonic stations, respectively, on
11–12 May 2011. It is worth noting that, during the
night between 11 and 12 May, a lava fountain took
place at NSEC, accompanied by amplitude increases
in both volcanic and infrasonic tremor. The small
plots in Fig. 2 exhibit examples of waveforms at
different stations for all the seismic signals recorded
at Mt. Etna: VT earthquake, LP event sequence, VLP
event, and a volcanic tremor window. Similarly, the
small plots in Fig. 3 show waveforms of infrasonic
events from NSEC and NEC, as well as a window of
infrasonic tremor from NSEC. In the next sections the
techniques applied to detect and locate these signals
at Mt. Etna are described.
3.1. Volcanic Tremor
One aspect of volcanic tremor at Mt. Etna is its
continuity in time, as also observed at other basaltic
volcanoes with persistent activity such as Stromboli
(Italy; LANGER and FALSAPERLA, 1996). Most of the
energy from volcanic tremor at Mt. Etna is radiated
below 5 Hz (e.g., LOMBARDO et al., 1996; FALSAPERLA
et al., 2005; ALPARONE et al., 2007). Another inter-
esting feature of the volcanic tremor is its close
relationship to changes in eruptive activity, high-
lighted by variations in amplitude, spectral content,
wavefield features, and source location (e.g., GRESTA
et al., 1991; ALPARONE et al., 2007; PATANÈ et al.,
2008; CANNATA et al., 2010a).
It is impossible to use techniques based on first
arrival phase picking inversion, similar to those used
to calculate earthquake hypocenters, to locate the
source of volcanic tremor, because of its nonimpul-
sive character. With the exception of the techniques
proposed for seismic arrays (e.g., METAXIAN et al.,
1997; ALMENDROS et al., 2001), most of the methods
applied to signals recorded by sparse seismic net-
works to locate volcanic tremor are based on
amplitude decay (e.g., BATTAGLIA and AKI, 2003;
KUMAGAI et al., 2010; JONES et al., 2011). A method
Vol. 170, (2013) Monitoring seismo-volcanic and infrasonic signals 1753

Figure 1
Digital elevation model of Mt. Etna with the location of broadband seismic stations (a) and infrasonic stations (b). The digital elevation model
in the upper left corner of (a) shows the distribution of the four summit craters (VOR Voragine, BN Bocca Nuova, SEC Southeast Crater, NEC
Northeast Crater) and the new SEC (NSEC), indicated by the red dot. The black concentric lines in (a, b) are altitude contour lines from 1 to
3 km a.s.l. with spacing of 1 km

based on amplitude decay, assuming propagation in a
homogeneous medium, is applied at Mt. Etna to
locate the source of volcanic tremor (DI GRAZIA et al.,
2006; PATANÈ et al., 2008). Signals recorded by 19
broadband stations, located at distances ranging
between *1 and 9 km from the center of the summit
area, are used (triangles in Fig. 1a). These signals are
filtered in the band 0.5–2.5 Hz, and root-mean-square
(RMS) amplitudes of the 25th percentile on sliding
windows, instead of average values, are estimated.
For a given time series, the pth percentile can be
defined as the value such that p % of the measure-
ments are less than this value and (1-p) % are
greater. The use of percentiles enables us to effi-
ciently remove transients in the signal and to consider
continuous recordings (DI GRAZIA et al., 2006;
PATANÈ et al., 2008). CANNATA et al. (2010a) calcu-
lated site effects at these stations by applying the
1754 A. Cannata et al. Pure Appl. Geophys.

Figure 2
Helicorder of the seismic signal recorded by the vertical component of station EBEL on 11–12 May 2011. The red squares highlight different
types of seismic signals, whose waveforms at the vertical components of five stations are reported in the small left and right plots. The blue
dashed rectangle indicates the period characterized by the volcanic tremor amplitude increase, concomitant with lava fountain activity

Figure 3
Helicorder of the infrasonic signal recorded by station EBEL on 11–12 May 2011. The red squares highlight different types of infrasonic
signals, whose waveforms at five stations are reported in the small left and right plots. The blue dashed rectangle indicates the period
characterized by infrasonic tremor, concomitant with lava fountain activity

method described by MATSUBARA et al. (2004) with studies at Mt. Etna have shown that the site effects do
eight regional earthquakes with maximum epicentral not heavily influence the tremor source locations. The
distance of about 1,000 km and magnitude ranging tremor source location is estimated by using a grid-
from 5.5 to 6.9. However, year-long volcanic tremor search approach (e.g., GOTTSCHAMMER and SURONO,
Vol. 170, (2013) Monitoring seismo-volcanic and infrasonic signals
2000; BATTAGLIA et al., 2005; DI GRAZIA et al., 2006),
assuming that seismic amplitude (A) decays with
distance (r) according to the general law
pf
Aðf ; r Þ ¼ A0 ð f Þr b ear ; a¼ ; ð1Þ
Qc
where f is the frequency, c is the velocity, b is the
exponent, which takes values of 0.5 or 1 for the cases
of surface and body waves, respectively, and a is the
frequency-dependent absorption coefficient. Q rep-
resents the ray-path-averaged quality factor.
Equation (1) can be linearized by taking the loga-
rithm of both sides as (DI GRAZIA et al., 2006;
CANNATA et al., 2010a):
ln Ai þ ari ¼ ln A0  b ln ri ;
where Ai is the RMS amplitude measured at the ith
station, ri is the corresponding source-to-receiver
distance, and A0 is the amplitude at the source. In
Eq. (2), ln A0 and b can be considered the intercept
and slope of the linear equation, respectively. The
source location of tremor is then found on the basis of
the goodness of the linear regression fit (hereafter
referred to as R2) obtained for each point on a three-
dimensional (3D) grid centered beneath the summit
craters (DI GRAZIA et al., 2006). For this grid we
generally consider a 6 9 6 9 6 km3 volume with a
spacing between nodes of 250 m. Similar to all grid-
search-based methods, the grid spacing is chosen as a
compromise between good spatial resolution and
reasonable computation time. The centroid position
of all the 3D grid points whose R2 values do not differ
by more than 1 % from the maximum R2 value is
considered as the tremor source location. Although
the attenuation factor should not have a large influ-
ence on the source locations (BATTAGLIA et al., 2005),
PATANÈ et al. (2008) and CANNATA et al. (2010a)
iteratively computed several values of a in Eq. (2)
(0 B a B 0.4 with step of 0.01) with the aim of
improving the goodness of fit. However, it was
observed that the best values of R2 were achieved
with very low a values, mainly between 0 and 0.02,
suggesting high values of ray-path-averaged quality
factor Q. To avoid unstable solutions, we accept a
result only when: (1) the goodness of the R2 fit is
C0.9, and (2) the number of available stations is[13.
An example of nonfiltered and filtered 1-h-long
1755
windows of seismic signals recorded at 15 stations is
reported in Fig. 4, together with a plot showing the
logarithm of the 25th percentile of the RMS versus
the logarithm of the source–station distance.
To assess the stability of the source locations, a
jackknife technique is employed (EFRON, 1982). This
procedure is especially useful to reduce the bias when
extreme scores are present in the dataset and/or the
statistical distribution of the underlying population is
unknown. For each source location in the jackknife
procedure, also called ‘‘leave one out,’’ n (number of
stations) estimates of an unknown parameter P
(latitude, longitude, and depth of volcanic tremor
source) are computed by leaving one station out at a
time (DI GRAZIA et al., 2009). We denote the
ð2Þ
arithmetic mean of these estimates by
X
n
¼1
P Pi ; ð3Þ
n i¼1
where Pi is the parameter computed by omitting the
ith station. Define the ith so-called pseudovalue as
^  ðn  1ÞPi ;
J i ¼ nP ð4Þ
^ is the parameter computed by considering all
where P
the stations. Finally, the jackknife estimator of
parameter P is given by
  1X n
^ ¼
J P ^  ðn  1ÞP:
Ji ¼ nP  ð5Þ
n i¼1
^ is biased,
If the original estimate of parameter P
then part of the bias is removed by the jackknife
procedure. Further, an estimate   of the standard error
^ , is given by
of the jackknife estimate, J P
sffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
X n   2 
1 ^
dJ ðP^ Þ ¼ Ji  J P : ð6Þ
nðn  1Þ i¼1
The errors of volcanic tremor source location,
calculated by applying the above-described method,
generally have a magnitude on the order of hundreds
of meters (e.g., DI GRAZIA et al., 2006, 2009; PATANÈ
et al., 2008).
Similar to all amplitude-decay-based location
techniques, the location method described here has
various limitations that in particular cases can heavily
affect the location reliability. First, the existence of
more than one source might cause the tremor centroid
1756 A. Cannata et al. Pure Appl. Geophys.
 Vol. 170, (2013) Monitoring seismo-volcanic and infrasonic signals
b Figure 4
a Nonfiltered and b filtered (0.5–2.5 Hz) 1-h-long windows of
seismic signals recorded by the vertical component of 15 stations.
c Logarithm of the 25th percentile of the RMS time series versus
the logarithm of the source–station distance
to shift toward a position in between the real locations
of the volcanic tremor sources (BATTAGLIA et al.,
2005). Such a drawback has to be taken into account
especially when the distinct sources generate seismic
signals sharing the same frequency content (their
contributions cannot easily be separated) and with
comparable amplitude at the stations. Further, this
location method considers isotropic wave radiation.
Such an assumption is inconsistent with the source
mechanisms of volcanic tremor and LP events, which
are generally considered to result from fluid-filled
resonances (e.g., CHOUET, 1996; DE BARROS et al.,
2011; DAVI et al., 2012). However, as demonstrated by
KUMAGAI et al. (2010, 2011), scattering phenomena,
particularly significant at higher frequencies and in
volcano environments characterized by steep topogra-
phy and strong structural heterogeneity, can make the
isotropic radiation assumption valid. Another limita-
tion of the method is the use of a fixed b value (0.5 or 1
for surface or body waves, respectively; see Eq. 1),
which may sometimes be inappropriate. Indeed, the
dominance of surface or body waves in the wavefield
strongly depends on the distance from the source, and
hence on the considered station, and on the tremor
source depth, which can be time dependent.
In Fig. 5 the locations of volcanic tremor centroids
during 11–13 May 2008 are plotted. Before *9:00
GMT on 13 May 2008 the volcanic tremor source is
located roughly below NEC at an altitude ranging
between -0.5 and 0.5 km a.s.l. A clear and sharp shift of
the volcanic tremor source to the southeast at a very
shallow depth took place at the same time as the eruptive
fissure feeding the 2008–2009 eruption opened. In spite
of the above-mentioned limitations of amplitude-decay-
based location methods, the example in Fig. 5 shows
how the volcanic tremor locations (and their variation in
time) correlate very well with the volcano activity.
3.2. LP and VLP Events
A number of papers deal with the relation
between volcanic activity and LP/VLP events at
1757
Mt. Etna (e.g., PATANÈ et al., 2008; DI GRAZIA et al.,
2009; CANNATA et al., 2010b), showing how occur-
rence rate, energy, waveforms, spectral content, and/
or source locations often change before, during, and
after eruptive activities. However, it is worth noting
that LP and VLP events are recorded at Mt. Etna even
during noneruptive periods, and their occurrence is
often not directly associated to any observable
volcanic activity (CANNATA et al., 2009a).
Before analyzing LP and VLP events, it is
necessary to detect them. Different methods are
applied to the signal in the time domain, in the
frequency domain, and to the wavefield features such
as rectilinearity and planarity (e.g., WITHERS et al.,
1998). The technique applied at Mt. Etna to detect LP
and VLP events is based on the percentile calculated
on RMS series (CANNATA et al., 2011a). The RMS
envelope is calculated by a moving window of fixed
length applied to the signal filtered in two different
frequency bands: 0.2–2.0 Hz (for LP event detection)
and 0.05–0.2 Hz (for VLP event detection). Succes-
sively, the percentile on moving windows of the RMS
envelope is calculated. Consequently, the estimation
of percentile enables us to efficiently detect ampli-
tude transients and estimate the background signal
level. The percentile threshold is chosen on the basis
of both the amount of transients in the signal that
must be included or excluded in our calculations and
the signal-to-noise ratio (CANNATA et al., 2011a). In
particular, we use 109 the 5th percentile for LP
events and 259 the 5th percentile for VLP events. An
example of detection of LP events on a 15-min-long
window of seismic signal is presented in Fig. 6.
Regarding the source location, different tech-
niques are applied to LP and VLP events. Concerning
the former, the methods used worldwide to locate LP
events are based on seismic amplitude decay (e.g.,
BATTAGLIA et al., 2003), on the cross-correlation
coefficient among the signals at various stations to
precisely estimate the time delays (e.g., SACCOROTTI
et al., 2007), and on algorithms developed for arrays
(e.g., INZA et al., 2011). At Mt. Etna, LP events are
located by applying a grid-search method based on
the joint computation of two different functions: (i)
semblance, used to measure the similarity among
signals recorded by two or more stations (e.g.,
NEIDELL and TANER, 1971; NISHIMURA et al., 2000);
1758 A. Cannata et al. Pure Appl. Geophys.
 Vol. 170, (2013) Monitoring seismo-volcanic and infrasonic signals 1759

b Figure 5
a Variation in time for the location of volcanic tremor centroids where Dt is the sampling interval, si is the origin time
computed during the period 11–13 May 2008. b Map and sections of the window sampling the ith trace, Ui(si ? jDt) is
of Mt. Etna showing the location of volcanic tremor centroids. The the jth time sample of the ith U trace, and M repre-
colors of the dots indicate time (see bottom time colorbar). The
dashed grey line in (a) represents the onset of the 2008–2009 sents the number of samples in the window. S0 is a
eruption. The thick black line and label ‘‘EF’’ in the map of number between 0 and 1. The value 1 is only reached
b indicate the eruptive fissure opened on 13 May 2008. The when the signals are identical, not only in waveform
concentric lines in the map of b are altitude contour lines from 1.75
to 3.25 km a.s.l. with spacing of 0.25 km. The black lines in the
but also in amplitude. Concerning the R2 value, its
sections of b represent the volcano profile computation method is equivalent to that performed
to locate volcanic tremor as explained in Sect. 3.1.
and (ii) R2 values, calculated on the basis of the The LP event location method consists in finding
spatial distribution of seismic amplitude (Sect. 3.1). a set of arrival times (si, i = 1,…, N), which yields a
Concerning the former, let us consider traces U, maximum joint semblance–R2 value for the N-
acquired by a certain number of sensors N; the channel data. The procedure includes several steps
semblance is defined as (NEIDELL and TANER, 1971; common to other location methods (e.g., ALMENDROS
ALMENDROS and CHOUET, 2003) and CHOUET, 2003; RIPEPE et al., 2007). First of all, a
N 2 broad enough region of interest has to be determined
P
M P
Ui ðsi þ jDtÞ to include the actual source. The 3D grid of possible
S0 ¼
j¼1 i¼1
; ð7Þ locations is 6 9 6 9 3.25 km3, centered on the
P
M P
N
2 volcanic edifice, and with a vertical extent from
N Ui ðsi þ jDtÞ
j¼1 i¼1 0 km a.s.l. to the top of the volcano. The horizontal

Figure 6
a 15-min-long window of seismic signal recorded by the vertical component of station ECPN and b corresponding RMS envelope calculated
by using a moving window of 1 s. The horizontal dashed grey line in b indicates the detection threshold calculated by a percentile value of 5
multiplied by 10. The arrows at the top of a indicate the onset time of the detected events
1760 A. Cannata et al.
and vertical grid spacing is 250 m. The start time ts is
fixed as the time of first arrival at a reference station
(generally chosen on the basis of the highest signal-
to-noise ratio). The source is assumed to be at each
node of the grid, and for each node the origin time t0
is calculated, assuming a certain value of propagation
velocity of the seismic waves v, as follows:
t0 ¼ ts  r=v;
where r is the distance between the reference station
and the node of the grid that is assumed to be the source
location. The theoretical travel times are calculated at
all the sensors ti (i = 1,…, N, number of stations):
ti ¼ ri =v;
where ri is the distance between the ith station and the
node of the grid assumed to be the source location.
Then, using these theoretical travel times and the
origin time, the signals at the different stations are
delayed and the values of semblance and R2 are
computed. Once the spatial distributions of both
semblance and R2 values are determined, the two 3D
grids of values are normalized by subtracting the
minimum value and dividing by the maximum value.
Thus, the values belonging to the two grids range
from 0 to 1, and the same weights are assigned to
semblance and R2. Then, the two normalized grids are
summed node by node. The source is determined to
be located at the node where the delayed signals show
the largest composite semblance–R2 value. The sta-
tions used for the LP event locations include the
summit station ring (EBEL, ETFI, ECPN, EBCN,
EPLC, ECNE, and EPDN) together with EMFS and
ESVO (Fig. 1a).
N 2
P
M P
UiL ðsi þ jDtÞ
j¼1 i¼1
S0 ¼ N 
P
M P
N UiL ðsi þ jDtÞ2 þUiQ ðsi þ jDtÞ2 þUiT ðsi þ jDtÞ2
j¼1 i¼1
This joint method takes advantage of both LP
waveform coherency among the different stations and
their spatial amplitude distribution. Using both
Pure Appl. Geophys.
Figure 7 c
a Nonfiltered and b filtered (\2 Hz) waveforms of a LP event
recorded by the vertical component of six stations and c maps and
sections of Mt. Etna showing the portion of the model containing
grid nodes with values of semblance, R2, and semblance ? R2
higher than 95 % of the respective maximum values (see text for
details). The concentric lines in the top plots of (c) are altitude
contour lines from 2.50 to 3.25 km a.s.l. with spacing of 0.25 km.
The black lines in the bottom plots of (c) represent the volcano
profile
ð8Þ
semblance and R2, the drawbacks associated with
the amplitude decay location method (discussed in
Sect. 3.1) are reduced.
Figure 7 shows an example of LP event source
ð9Þ location: in particular, the model volumes containing
the grid nodes with values of semblance, R2, and
semblance ? R2 higher than 95 % of the respective
maximum values are indicated by the blue surface
(Fig. 7c).
At Mt. Etna, as well as at other volcanoes (e.g.,
ALMENDROS and CHOUET, 2003), VLP events are
characterized by radial particle motion, and thus are
located by radial semblance (e.g., KILAUEA, DAWSON
et al., 2010; STROMBOLI, GIUDICEPIETRO et al., 2009).
KAWAKATSU et al. (2000) introduced the radial sem-
blance definition to take advantage of three-
component data. In this definition, KAWAKATSU et al.
(2000) used the radial component of ground motion
to compute semblance and introduced a penalty
function to enhance the weight of receivers for which
highly rectilinear particle motions are observed
(ALMENDROS and CHOUET, 2003). Therefore, the
modified equation of semblance is (KAWAKATSU et al.,
2000; ALMENDROS and CHOUET, 2003)
!
N 
P  2
2 2
N UiQ ðsi þ jDtÞ þUiT ðsi þ jDtÞ
i¼1
 ; ð10Þ
where UL is the component of the ground motion in
the source–receiver direction, UQ is the component in
the direction perpendicular to UL within the vertical
Vol. 170, (2013) Monitoring seismo-volcanic and infrasonic signals 1761
1762 A. Cannata et al.
plane which contains both source and receiver, and
UT is the horizontal component perpendicular to both
UL and UQ. In this case, S0 depends on the shape as
well as on the amplitude of the signals. The radial
semblance method comprises several similar steps to
the semblance ? R2 method, including a grid search-
ing procedure. The source is assumed to be at each
node of the grid, and for each node theoretical travel
times are calculated at all the used stations. It is
necessary that these stations record the three compo-
nents of the ground velocity. For each node, these
components are rotated from UZ, UE, and UN (ground
velocity components in the vertical, east–west, and
north–south directions, respectively) to UL, UQ, and
UT considering the node location as source location.
Then, S0 is calculated by Eq. (10). The source
location is determined to be the node where S0
reaches a maximum value. For VLP location, only
stations belonging to the summit ring are used. An
example of VLP waveforms, source location, and
particle motion is shown in Fig. 8.
Similar to the volcanic tremor and LP event
location methods, the radial semblance technique also
suffers from some limitations, mainly due to the use
of particle motion. Particle motions, even if produced
by an isotropic source and recorded by a seismometer
located at the surface, may not necessarily point to
the source because of the effect of both free surface
and complex stratigraphy (NEUBERG and POINTER,
2000; ALMENDROS and CHOUET, 2003). Concerning the
former, the problem is more serious due to the fact
that volcanoes have generally pronounced topogra-
phy, causing severe waveform perturbations
(NEUBERG and POINTER, 2000). To reduce the influence
of the free surface it is necessary to use stations at
close epicentral distances (NEUBERG and POINTER,
2000). For this reason, only stations belonging to the
summit ring are used to locate VLP sources at Mt.
Etna. Further, since we do not apply any signal
normalization, the stations located nearest to the
source (and showing the largest signals) have the
greatest ‘‘weight’’ in the source location. Regarding
complex stratigraphy, the use of very long-period
signals (generally 5–10 s at Mt. Etna) notably
reduces the particle motion distortion due to medium
heterogeneity. For instance, assuming a velocity of
1.7 km/s (e.g., PATANÈ et al., 2008) and a period of
Pure Appl. Geophys.
Figure 8 c
a Nonfiltered and b filtered (\0.4 Hz) radial components of a VLP
event recorded at six stations. c Map and sections of Mt. Etna
showing the portion of the model containing grid nodes with values
of radial semblance higher than 95 % of the maximum value, and
the particle motion in a 20-s-long windows centered on the VLP
signal (grey rectangle in b). The concentric grey lines in the map of
c are altitude contour lines from 1.75 to 3.25 km a.s.l. with spacing
of 0.25 km. The grey lines in the sections of c represent the volcano
profile
5–10 s, VLP events have wavelength of 8.5–17 km,
and therefore can be considered relatively insensitive
to km-scale structures.
Concerning the error calculation in both LP and
VLP location techniques, the method described in
ALMENDROS and CHOUET (2003) was used. Following
these authors, the error in a source position can be
defined as the size of the region within which
semblance ? R2 or radial semblance (in case of LP
and VLP events, respectively) is above a certain
level. In order to find such a level, the signal-to-noise
ratio is estimated at all the stations used in the source
location, and then on the basis of this a sem-
blance ? R2 or radial semblance threshold is fixed.
The 3D extension of the region with semblance ? R2
or radial semblance values higher than the fixed
threshold can be considered an estimation of the
source location error (for further details see ALMEND-
ROS and CHOUET, 2003). The error estimations
performed on both LP and VLP events by this
method were small and generally lower than the grid
spacing (\250 m; PATANÈ et al., 2008; CANNATA
et al., 2009a).
3.3. Infrasound Signals
Recent studies have shown that the infrasonic
signal at Mt. Etna is generally made up of amplitude
transients (named ‘‘infrasonic events’’) characterized
by durations of less than 1 to over 30 s, impulsive
compression onsets, and peaked spectra with most of
the energy in the frequency range 0.3–6.0 Hz (e.g.,
CANNATA et al., 2009b, c). Infrasonic events have
been generated at the NEC, SEC, NSEC, BN, and the
2008–2009 eruptive fissure (CANNATA et al., 2009b, c,
2011b). Sometimes infrasonic tremor, a continuous
infrasound signal lasting from minutes to days, is
recorded and is associated with both paroxysmal
Vol. 170, (2013) Monitoring seismo-volcanic and infrasonic signals 1763
1764 A. Cannata et al. Pure Appl. Geophys.

activities and degassing processes. In particular, in
2011–2012, 25 episodes of lava fountains took place
at NSEC, generating infrasonic tremor. Additionally,
degassing at NEC is sometimes accompanied by
infrasonic tremor.
Unlike LP and VLP events, and volcanic tremor,
whose signatures in most cases are very clear in the
seismic signals recorded by the stations (especially
those nearest to the summit), the signature of
infrasonic events and tremor can be hidden by
weather-related noise. In particular, wind generates
a broadband, tremor-like signal lasting tens of
seconds to hours (JOHNSON et al., 2003). Thus, the
number of detections of infrasonic events and tremors
depends heavily not only on the volcano acoustic
activity, but also on the weather conditions.
3.3.1 Infrasonic Events
Similarly to LP and VLP events, infrasonic events at
Mt. Etna are detected by a percentile-based method.
Different techniques have been developed to locate
infrasonic events, generally based on the semblance
function or cross-correlation coefficient (e.g., RIPEPE
and MARCHETTI, 2002; RIPEPE et al., 2004; GARCES
2003; JOHNSON, 2005; MATOZA et al., 2007; RIPEPE
et al., 2007; JONES et al., 2008). At Mt. Etna, we
developed a technique based on two different

Figure 9
a Waveforms of an infrasonic event, generated by NSEC and recorded at five stations, and b map of Mt. Etna showing the spatial distribution
of semblance, brightness, and semblance ? brightness. The concentric lines in the plots of b are altitude contour lines from 1.75 to 3.25 km
a.s.l. with spacing of 0.25 km. The black circle in the right plot of b indicates the source location. The black arrows in b indicate the location
of NSEC
Vol. 170, (2013) Monitoring seismo-volcanic and infrasonic signals 1765

Figure 10
a Waveforms of infrasonic tremor window, generated at NEC and NSEC and delayed according to the source–station travel time, and b maps
of Mt. Etna showing their spatial distributions of semblance. The concentric lines in b are altitude contour lines from 1.75 to 3.25 km a.s.l.
with spacing of 0.25 km. The black circles in b indicate the source locations. The black arrows in b indicate the location of NEC (left plot)
and NSEC (right plot)

functions (CANNATA et al., 2011b): semblance and a
modified version of brightness (KAO and SHAN, 2004).
The former is explained in Sect. 3.2. The brightness
function, whose definition was given by KAO and SHAN
(2004), was slightly modified (CANNATA et al., 2011b) to
1X N
B0 ¼ ðMax ðWi ÞÞ;
N i¼1
where Wi is a time window of the signal Ui multiplied
by a Hanning window:
Wi ¼ Hanning jUi ðsi þ jDtÞj; ð12Þ
with j = 1,…, M.
In this case the signals Ui have to be normalized
such that, if all the largest amplitudes are aligned at
the center of the considered time windows, B0 is
equal to 1 (CANNATA et al., 2011b). Similar to the
ð11Þ semblance–R2 method explained in Sect. 3.2, the
technique used to locate infrasonic events consists in
finding a set of arrival times that yields a maximum
joint semblance–brightness value for the N-channel
1766 A. Cannata et al. Pure Appl. Geophys.
 Vol. 170, (2013) Monitoring seismo-volcanic and infrasonic signals
b Figure 11
a Map and sections of Mt. Etna with source locations of volcanic
tremor (red surface), LP events (blue surface), VLP events (cyan
surface), and infrasonic events and tremor (yellow dots), recorded
in 2011. The blue and cyan surfaces enclose all the grid nodes with
more than 1,500 LP and VLP event locations, respectively. The red
surface encloses all the grid nodes with more than 200 volcanic
tremor source locations. The radii of the yellow dots are
proportional to the number of locations of infrasonic events and
tremor in each grid node. b 3D view of the plots shown in (a). The
concentric lines in the map of (a) are altitude contour lines from
1.75 to 3.25 km a.s.l. with spacing of 0.25 km. The grey lines in the
sections of (a) represent the volcano profile
data. In this case, since the vent radiating infrasound
can be considered a source point located on the
topographical surface, the region of interest is defined
by a bidimensional grid of assumed source positions
coinciding with the topography (CANNATA et al.,
2011b). The used grid spacing ranges from 10 to
50 m, depending on the occurrence rate of the events
to locate. The source is located at the node where the
delayed signals show the largest composite sem-
blance–brightness value. This joint method not only
shows the high location resolution of the semblance
method, but also, by using the brightness function,
reduces the side lobes generally characterizing sem-
blance locations (JONES and JOHNSON, 2010;
MONTALTO et al., 2010; CANNATA et al., 2011b).
Figure 9 shows an example of source location of an
infrasonic event generated at NSEC.
3.3.2 Infrasonic Tremor
Unlike the infrasonic events that can be detected
within the continuous signal by methods searching for
amplitude transients (such as short time average/long
time average and percentile-based methods), infra-
sonic tremor requires a different detection technique.
In most cases, it is detected and located by array-based
techniques such as semblance (e.g., RIPEPE et al.,
2010) and progressive multichannel correlation meth-
ods (PMCC; e.g., LE PICHON and CANSI, 2003; MATOZA
et al., 2010). At Mt. Etna, the infrasonic permanent
network is made up of sparse stations (Fig. 1b), and
tremor detection is performed as follows: Infrasonic
signals, recorded at stations located at different
azimuths around the summit area, are filtered in
frequency bands of interest. Since low-frequency
bands (\1 Hz) are preferred due to the lower
1767
coherence loss of the low-frequency signals across
the sparse network, only the stations equipped with
GRASS microphones are used. Then, moving win-
dows of signals at different stations are extracted and
compared by cross-correlation coefficient, which is
maximized by considering prospective lags between
the windows. Cross-correlation values between all the
possible pairs of stations are calculated and averaged.
If the average cross-correlation exceeds a fixed
threshold, a ‘‘tremor window’’ is detected.
The infrasonic tremor source location is per-
formed on these tremor windows by a method similar
to the one used to locate infrasonic events. In the case
of infrasonic tremor, only the semblance function is
applied. Figure 10 shows two examples of infrasonic
tremor windows, generated by NEC and NSEC and
recorded by the four summit stations equipped with
GRASS microphones. The signals shown in the top
plots are delayed according to the travel time from
source to station to highlight the similarity among the
waveforms.
The limitations of the presented location methods
for both infrasonic events and tremor primarily
depend upon the sound speed, which can be variable,
mainly depending on the air temperature. Also the
wind, in addition to generating a tremor-like noise
hiding the volcano-generated signals, can affect the
arrival times of the infrasonic signals, and hence the
location reliability (JOHNSON, 2003). However, at
short and intermediate distances (\5 km) these
effects are generally negligible.
Similar to LP and VLP events, also for both
infrasonic events and tremor recorded at Mt. Etna the
error estimation is performed by using the ALMENDROS
and CHOUET (2003) method. In this case, the infra-
sonic signals are considered in place of the seismic
ones. Furthermore, a two-dimensional (2D) distribu-
tion of semblance ? brightness or semblance (for
infrasonic events and tremor, respectively) is taken
into account rather than a 3D distribution of sem-
blance ? R2 or radial semblance. Unlike seismic
signals, whose epicentral location errors are generally
larger than 100 m, error locations of infrasound
signals are generally much lower (JOHNSON, 2005). In
the case of infrasonic signal locations at Mt. Etna, the
errors generally have a magnitude on the order of tens
of meters (MONTALTO et al., 2010).
1768 A. Cannata et al.
4. Discussion and Conclusions
In this work, we describe the methods used to
detect and locate seismo-volcanic and infrasonic
signals at Mt. Etna. These methods can be applied to
other volcanoes and do not require particular network
geometries (such as arrays) but rather networks made
up of sparse stations placed within a few km around
the signal source.
The location of seismo-volcanic and infrasonic
signals is very useful in identifying changes in the
volcano dynamics for both monitoring and research
purposes. Furthermore, their investigation can give
important information on the volcano plumbing sys-
tem geometry. Although VT earthquakes are the key
to tomographic studies in volcanoes (e.g., PATANÈ
et al., 2006), they generally cannot provide precise
information about the location and geometry of
shallow magma conduits (ALMENDROS et al., 2002).
Understanding of the complex velocity structure in
the shallow part of the volcano requires estimation of
velocity variations of both P- and S-waves with
spatial resolution on the order of hundreds of meters,
which is not available at many volcanoes worldwide.
A more useful approach, consisting of analyzing
seismo-volcanic and infrasonic signals, has allowed
the illumination of the plumbing system of several
volcanoes (e.g., ALMENDROS et al., 2002; BATTAGLIA
et al., 2005; FEE et al., 2010).
As an example, in Fig. 11 we plot the source
locations of volcanic tremor (red surface), LP
events (blue surface), VLP events (cyan surface),
and infrasonic events and tremor (yellow dots),
recorded during the year 2011. The figure represents
the source location information of *8,600 h of
volcanic tremor, *130,000 LP events, *100,000
VLP events, and *28,000 both infrasonic events
and infrasonic tremor windows. The volcanic tremor
source, fairly stable at 1–2 km a.s.l. below NEC, is
likely caused by the presence of a shallow magma
storage area cyclically feeding the lava fountain
activities at NSEC (COLTELLI et al., 2012). During
such paroxysmal episodes, the tremor sources
migrated toward NSEC and shallowed (COLTELLI
et al., 2012), as observed during other lava foun-
tains (e.g., 4–5 September 2007; PATANÈ et al.,
2008). Such migration is not visible in Fig. 11,
Pure Appl. Geophys.
because of the small number of shallow source
locations compared with the deep ones. LP and
VLP sources, located above the shallow magma
storage zone, could be triggered by gas bubbles,
released from the aforementioned magma batch and
feeding surface gas emission (e.g., AIUPPA, 2010).
Finally, infrasonic sources, located at NEC, BN, and
NSEC, highlight the vents with explosive activity
(BN and NSEC) and intense pulsing degassing
(NEC), representing the shallowest portions of the
plumbing system.
These results show the capacity of the described
methods to locate the seismo-volcanic and infrasonic
sources, and then to reconstruct the volcano plumbing
system. Due to the fact that volcano activity changes
are often accompanied by variations in seismo-volca-
nic and/or infrasonic sources, such information is
useful not only for research but also for monitoring
purposes.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Phil Dawson and an anonymous
reviewer for their useful suggestions that greatly
improved the paper.
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(Received October 19, 2012, revised November 30, 2012, accepted November 30, 2012, Published online December 22, 2012)

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