A team of engineers from Sweden’s Chalmers University of Technology have devised and installed a new system to monitor the world’s top seven active volcanoes.
Previous systems have relied entirely on seismic activity. The new method also measures sulphur dioxide emissions.
“Increasing gas emissions may indicate that magma is rising inside the volcano. If this information is added to the other parameters, better risk estimates can be made at the observatories,” commented Mattias Johansson at the Department of Radio and Space Science at Chalmers.
According to the team, some of the key challenges were making the equipment robust and energy efficient, as well as being fully automated.
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Date Published: March 13, 2009
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