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Published February 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

Constraining Dike Opening Models With Seismic Velocity Changes Associated With the 2023–2024 Eruption Sequence on the Reykjanes Peninsula

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 2. Geological Hazards Science Center
  • 3. ROR icon Scripps Research Institute
  • 4. ROR icon Reykjavík University
  • 5. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 6. Valey Kamalov LLC
  • 7. ROR icon Google (United States)

Abstract

The stress field perturbation caused by magmatic intrusions within volcanic systems induces strain in the surrounding region. This effect results in the opening and closing of microcracks in the vicinity of the intrusion, which can affect regional seismic velocities. In late November 2023, we deployed a distributed acoustic sensing interrogator to convert an existing 100-km telecommunication fiber-optic cable along the coast of Iceland's Reykjanes peninsula into a dense seismic array, which has run continuously. Measuring changes in surface wave moveout with ambient noise cross-correlation, we observe up to 2% changes in Rayleigh wave phase velocity (dv/v) following eruptions in the peninsula's 2023–2024 sequence that are likely associated with magmatic intrusions into the eruption-feeding dike. We apply a Bayesian inversion to compute the posterior distribution of potential dike opening models for each eruption by considering dv/v measurements for varying channel pairs and frequency bands, and assuming this velocity change is tied to volumetric strain associated with dike-opening. Our results are in agreement with those based on geodetic measurement and provide independent constraints on the depth of the dike, demonstrating the viability of this novel inversion and new volcano monitoring directions through fiber sensing.

Copyright and License

© 2025. The Author(s). This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Center for Geomechanics and Mitigation of Geohazards (1822214), and the NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER), award number 1848166. Our work was guided by valuable conversations with Robert Clayton, Michael Gurnis, Tobias Koehne, Yuan-Kai Liu, Auden Reid-McLaughlin, Alba Rodríguez Padilla, John Wilding, and Shane Zhang. We thank those involved in the review process for this work, including Marcos Moreno (editor), John Browning (reviewer), and two anonymous reviewers.

Data Availability

Data are available on CaltechDATA (Bird & Zhan, 2024).

Supplemental Material

Supporting Information S1 (PDF)

Original Version of Manuscript (PDF)

Peer Review History (PDF)

Author Response to Peer Review Comments (PDF)

First Revision of Manuscript (PDF)

Files

AGU Advances - 2025 - Bird - Constraining Dike Opening Models With Seismic Velocity Changes Associated With the 2023 2024.pdf

Files (5.4 MB)

Additional details

Related works

Is supplemented by
Dataset: 10.22002/kxtar-bm759 (DOI)

Funding

Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
12500070
National Science Foundation
1822214
National Science Foundation
1848166

Dates

Accepted
2025-02-03
Available
2025-02-20
Version of record online

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Center for Geomechanics and Mitigation of Geohazards (GMG), Seismological Laboratory, Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
Publication Status
Published