Integrated processing of muon radiography and gravity anomaly data toward the realization of high-resolution 3-D density structural analysis of volcanoes: Case study of Showa-Shinzan lava dome, Usu, Japan

Abstract

We have developed an integrated processing method for muon radiography and gravity anomaly data for determining the 3-D density structures of volcanoes with a higher spatial resolution than is possible by conventional gravity inversion. In the present paper, we demonstrate the performance of the proposed method by performing numerical tests using synthesized data, and we present the results obtained by applying the proposed method to a volcano, Showa-Shinzan lava dome, Hokkaido, Japan. We obtained the detailed shape of a vent beneath the dome and detected the presence of solidified dense lava near the top of the dome. The results demonstrate the advantage of a hybrid measurement based on both gravity and muon radiography for imaging small structures with sizes of a few hundreds of meters near the surface of a volcano. ©2013. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.