Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

In Situ Sampling of Volcanic Emissions with a UAV Sensorweb: Progress and Plans

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:
Dynamic Data-Driven Environmental Systems Science (DyDESS 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 8964))

Abstract

A consortium of NASA, commercial, and academic partners, we have begun utilize small UAVs and aerostats for in situ sampling of volcanogenic gases and aerosols, using Turrialba Volcano as natural laboratory. Significant progress has been made over the last several years in utilizing single platforms with a number of newly miniaturized instruments appropriate to aircraft with sub-500 gm payloads. For example, we have been mapping the SO2-water-vapor plume at Turrialba, for comparison with NASA spacecraft-based (e.g., ASTER) data, and are measuring diffuse CO2 emissions over the volcano’s flanks, as well as in and near its eruption column. Future work will include devising strategies, platforms, and instrumentation for deployments of multiple UAV formations (“swarms”) as 2D and 3D time-series meshes, to better characterize the mass fluxes and dynamics of emissions. We plan to undertake test flights in the United States, as well as at Turrialba and Poas Volcanoes in Costa Rica. Our most immediate aims are to improve characterizations of local emissions for mitigation of proximal volcanic hazards and for validation of abundance retrievals and transport models based on orbital data. Overall, of course, we strive to better understand how volcanoes work, specifically to better constrain estimates of global SO2 and CO2 perennial (diffuse) and event-related (eruptive) emissions—changes in which may foster regional and global climate perturbations.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  1. Hobbs, P.V., Tuel, J.P., Hegg, D.A., Radke, L.F., Eltgroth, M.W.: Particles and gases in the emissions from the 1980–1981 volcanic eruptions of Mt St. Helens. J. Geophy. Res. 87, 11062–11086 (1982)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Casadevall, T.J., Rose, W.I., et al.: Sulfur dioxide and particles in quiescent volcanic plumes from poas, arenal, and colima volcanoes, costa rica and mexico. J. Geophys. Res. 9, 9633–9641 (1984)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Pieri, D.C., Ma, C., Simpson, J.J., Hufford, G.L., Grove, G., Grindle, T.: Analyses of in situ airborne volcanic ash from the feb 2000 eruption of hekla. Geophys. Res. Lett. 29, 19-1–19-4 (2002)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Carn, S.A., Froyd, K.D., et al.: In situ measurements of tropospheric volcanic plumes in Ecuador and Colombia during TC4. J. Geophy. Res. 116, D00J24 (2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010JD014718

  5. Casadevall, T.J.: The 1989–1990 eruption of redoubt volcano, alaska: impacts on aircraft operations. J. Volcanol. Geoth. Res. 62, 301–316 (1994)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Lacasse, C., Karlsdo´ttir, S., Larsen, G., Suusalu, H., Rose, W.I., Ernst, G.G.J.: Weather radar observations of the hekla 2000 eruption cloud, Iceland. Bull. Volc. 66, 457–473 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Rose, W.I., Gu, Y., et al.: The February–March 2000 eruption of Hekla, Iceland from a satellite perspective. In: Robock, A., Oppenheimer, C. (eds) Volcanism and the Earth’s Atmosphere. American Geophysical Union, Geophysical Monograph, vol. 139, 107–132 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Grindle, T.J., Burcham, F.W.: Nasa/ Tm-2003-212030: Engine Damage To A Nasa Dc- 8-72 Airplane From A High-Altitude Encounter With A Diffuse Volcanic Ash Cloud. NASA, Edwards (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Global Volcanism Program : Eyjafjallajokull 03/2010 Fissure eruption and lava flows from E flank on 20 March, Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program. BGVN, 35, 03 (2010). http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/volcano.cfm?vnum=1702-02=&volpage=var#bgvn_3503

  10. Oxford Economics.: Volcanic Ash Impact on Air Travel, report for Airbus Industries. Oxford Economics, Oxford (2012). http://www.oxfordeconomics.Com/my-oxford/projects/128815

  11. Guffanti, M.: Volcanic-ash hazards to aviation in the post-world: a status report. Presented at TETS 2012. In: Proceedings of the Turbine Engine Technology Symposium 2012, Dayton, 10–13 September. 2012. http://www.meetingdata.utcdayton.com/agenda/

  12. Stunder, B.J.B., Heffter, J.L., Draxler, R.R.: Airborne volcanic ash forecast area reliability, weather and forecasting. Weather Forecast. 22, 1132–1139 (2007). doi:10.1175/WAF1042.1

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Webley, P.W., Dehn, J., Lovick, J., Dean, K.G., Bailey, J.E., Valcic, L.: Near real time volcanic ash cloud detection: experiences from the alaska volcano observatory. In: Webley, P., Mastin, L. (eds.) Improved Prediction and Tracking of Volcanic Ash Clouds. Journal of Volcanology and Geothermal Research 186, 79–90 (2009)

    Google Scholar 

  14. Webley, P.W., Dean, K.G., Dehn, J., Bailey, J.E., Peterson, R.: Volcanic-ash dispersion modeling of the 2006 eruption of Augustine Volcano using the Puff model. In: Power, J.A., Coombs, M.L., Freymueller, J.T. (eds.) The 2006 Eruption of Augustine Volcano, Alaska. United States Geological Survey, Professional Papers, Ch. 21, vol. 1769, 507–526 (2010)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Springer, P.J.: Military Robots and Drones: A Reference Handbook. ABC-CLIO LLC, Santa Barbara (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Pieri, D.C., Diaz, J.A., Bland, G., Fladeland, M., Madrigal, Y., Corrales, E., Alan, A., Alegria, O., Realmuto, V., Miles, T., Abtahi, A.: In Situ Observations and Sampling of Volcanic Emissions with Unmanned Aircraft: A NASA/UCR Case Study at Turrialba Volcano, Costa Rica. In: Remote Sensing of Volcanoes and Volcanic Processes, Geological Society of London Special Publication, SP380: pp. 321–352 (2013)

    Google Scholar 

  17. Kreuger, A., Yang, K., Krotkov, N.: Enhanced monitoring of sulfur dioxide sources with hyperspectral UV sensors. In: Picard, R.H., Scha¨fer, K., Comeron, A., Kassianov, E., Mertens, C.J. (eds.) Remote Sensing of Clouds and the Atmosphere XIV. Proceedings of SPIE 7475, SPIE, Bellingham (2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.1117/12.830142

  18. Krotkov, N.A., Schoeberl, M.R., Morris, G.A., Carn, S., Yang, K.: Dispersion and lifetime of the SO2 cloud from the August 2008 Kasatochi eruption. Journal of Geophysical Research 115, D00L20 (2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2010JD013984

  19. Ippolito, C., Fladeland, M., Yeh, Y.H.: Applications of payload directed flight. In: Proceedings of the Aerospace Conference IEEE, p. 5, Big Sky, MT, IEEE Explore 7–14 March 2009. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=4839612 DOI: 10.1109/AERO.2009.4839612

  20. Christensen, L.E., Brunner, B., Truong, K.N., Mielke, R.E., Webster, C.R., Coleman, M.: Measurement of sulfur isotope compositions by tunable laser spectroscopy of SO2. Anal. Chem. (2007). doi:10.1021/ac071040p

    Google Scholar 

  21. Christensen, L.E., Spiers, G.D., Menzies, R.T., Jacob, J.: Tunable Laser Spectroscopy of CO2 near 2.05 μm: atmosph. retrieval biases due to neglecting line-mixing. J. Quant. Spec Rad. Trans. 110, 739–748 (2012)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. Burton, M.R., Sawyer, G.M., Granieri, D.: Deep carbon emissions from volcanoes, 2013. Rev. Mineral. Geochem. 75, 323–354 (2013)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Pedone, M., Aiuppa, A., Giudice, G., Grassa, F., Francofonte, V., Bergsson, B., Ilyinskaya, E.: Tunable diode laser measurements of hydrothermal/volcanic CO2, and implications for the global CO2 budget. Solid Earth Discuss. 6, 2645–2674 (2014). doi:10.5194/sed-6-2645-2014, www.solid-earthdiscuss.net/6/2645/2014/

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

This work was carried out, in part, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology under contract to the NASA Earth Surface and Interior Focus Area and the ASTER Project. We also gratefully acknowledge the continued support of Matt Fladeland and his Airborne Science team at NASA ARC (Randy Berthold, Don Herlth, Corey Ippolito, Matt Johnson, Rick Kolyer, Bruce Storms, Mark Sumich), Geoff Bland and Ted Miles at NASA GSFC/WFF, Justin Linick and Vince Realmuto at JPL, Gary Hunter and Paul Greenberg at NASA GRC, Darby Makel (Makel Engineering), Steve Fuerstenau (Radmet LLC), Jack Elston (BlackSwift Engineering), as well as the UCR CICANUM GasLab Team (Alfredo Alan, Oscar Alegria, Sara Azofiefa, Ernesto Corrales, and Yetty Madrigal). We would also like to thank our colleagues Lance Christensen and Florian Schwandner at JPL for helpful technical advice and encouragement.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA

    David Pieri

  2. GasLab of the Center for Investigations in Atomic, Nuclear, and Molecular Sciences (CICANUM), University of Costa Rica, Sanjose, Costa Rica

    Jorge Andres Diaz

Authors
  1. David Pieri
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Jorge Andres Diaz
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David Pieri .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Sai Ravela

  2. VA Polytechnic Institute and State Univ., Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

    Adrian Sandu

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

About this paper

Cite this paper

Pieri, D., Diaz, J.A. (2015). In Situ Sampling of Volcanic Emissions with a UAV Sensorweb: Progress and Plans. In: Ravela, S., Sandu, A. (eds) Dynamic Data-Driven Environmental Systems Science. DyDESS 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8964. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25138-7_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25138-7_3

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-25137-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-25138-7

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation