Developing Earth Observation strategies for Global Volcano Monitoring (G-VEWERS)

Satellite observations of displacement are critical to any efforts to monitor volcanoes globally given that less than half of world’s potentially active subaerial volcanoes are monitored continuously by ground-based systems.  Thermal, gas and displacement measurements all provide important insights for understanding volcanic processes.  Displacements measured by synthetic aperture radar in particular, are potentially informative in pre-eruptive periods, but remain especially uneven in their geographical coverage.  While this is partially due to variations in sources of uncertainty such as vegetation and atmospheric signals, it is also a consequence of unequal access to data and differences in local capacity to process and analyse it.

The Committee for Earth Observation Satellites Working Group on Disasters Volcano Pilot (2014-2017) and Volcano Demonstrator (2019-2023) projects aimed to illustrated the great potential that satellite data have for detection and forecasting of unrest and eruption.  These programs have played a particular role in connecting volcano observatory scientists to constellation SAR imagery with a diversity of wavelengths, acquisition strategies and data access policies.   This work has had an impact on monitoring decisions at volcanoes, especially in Latin America, but has also resulted in the development of new approaches for integrating and interpreting diverse EO observations and contributed to the development of a strategy for global satellite monitoring of volcanoes.

Here, we describe the aims and early progress of the successor initiative G-VEWERS (Global Volcano Early Warning and Eruption Response from Space). This aims to be a permanent partnership between space agencies, researchers at academic institutions, and volcano observatories, with the goal of coordinating the acquisition, access, and utilization of satellite data to support volcano monitoring and early warning at volcano observatories worldwide.