This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Masaya volcano in Nicaragua sits within 13 miles (21 kilometers) of 2 million people and is a popular tourist destination due to its lava lake. Penn State researchers recently found evidence of two new magma sources under the active volcano, highlighting what they called the critical importance of understanding transitions in volcanic behavior and shallow magma processes, especially when they potentially pose hazards to local communities.
The team used satellite data to investigate how the ground around Masaya volcano changed over six years. They identified a period of subsidence—when the ground moves down—and then uplift—when the ground moves up. They interpreted this change as an inflation of the main reservoir, possibly from a new deep magma source.
They also saw the area around the volcano's primary crater, called Santiago crater, and lava lake deflate over the entire study period, suggesting a more complex plumbing system. The researchers published their findings in Geophysical Research Letters. "These observations help scientists better understand how magma moves beneath Masaya and may improve monitoring and eruption forecasting in the future," said Lizzie Johnson, who graduated from Penn State with a bachelor's degree in geosciences in May and is the lead author of the paper.
Masaya volcano is a complex volcano with a nested series of craters and calderas—sinkholes formed from empty magma chambers—near Nicaragua's capital city, Managua. Masaya's magma systems are complex and dynamic, so they are still not well understood and are therefore of interest to researchers, Johnson said. "Having a thorough understanding of Masaya's volcanic activity and its related hazards is critical as around 2 million people live near Masaya and the caldera is a national park and popular tourist destination," Johnson said.
"Although Masaya last produced a major lava flow in 1772, its persistent degassing often produces dangerously high concentrations of sulfur dioxide volcanic gas." Young Cheol Kim, who graduated from Penn State this summer with his doctorate in geosciences, explained that the goal of the study was to understand the volcano to improve forecasting and communication of potential risks. "Doing continuous monitoring allows us to understand the baseline activity and see if things are changing," he said, noting that specific changes can indicate higher levels of activity and potential eruption events. "And then if there is a need to warn people, we can do that in a timely manner." To identify meaningful changes, they used geospatial geodetic data—many data points measuring ground deformation over a long period of time, collected by a satellite.
The satellite, in this case the Sentinel-1 satellite, makes a pass over the site about once every 12 days, according to the researchers. Sentinel-1 provided the data the researchers used in their interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) remote sensing approach. InSAR has two parts: synthetic aperture radar, which enables the satellite's sensor to penetrate clouds with long microwave radiation wavelengths to monitor the planet's surface; and interferometry, a way to measure distance by seeing how light waves interfere with each other and the surface.
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