InSAR helps Kilauea monitoring

Following several days of seismic activity at the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii the US Geological Survey's Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) requested access to ASAR data recently acquired by ESA's ENVISAT satellite to aid with their analysis of the deformation associated with the new intrusion and eruption. The data was interferometrically processed by HVO, and the figure above shows the interferogram for the period 11 April to 20 June 2007 illustrating very clearly many surface movements. For example the fringes in the Kilauea Caldera area suggest a summit deflation due to magma movement.