Source Mechanism of Vulcanian Degassing at Popocatépetl Volcano, Mexico, Determined From Moment-Tensor Inversion of Very-long-period Seismic Waveforms

The source mechanism of very-long-period (VLP) signals accompanying degassing exhalations at Popocatépetl is analyzed in the 15-70~s band by minimizing the residual error between data and synthetics calculated for a point source embedded in a homogeneous medium. The waveforms of two events (04/23/00, 05/23/00) representative of mild Vulcanian eruptions are well reproduced by our inversion, which takes into account volcano topography. The source centroid is positioned 1500~m below the western perimeter of the summit crater, and the modeled source is composed of a shallow-dipping crack (sill with easterly dip of 10° ) intersecting a steeply-dipping crack (northeast striking dike with northwest dip of 83° ), whose surface trace bisects the vent. Both cracks undergo a similar sequence of inflation, deflation, and reinflation --- reflecting a cycle of pressurization, depressurization, and repressurization within a time interval of 3-5~min. The largest moment release occurs in the sill, showing a maximum volume change of 500-1000\:m³, pressure drop of 3-5~MPa, and amplitude of recovered pressure equal to 1.2 times the amplitude of the pressure drop. In contrast, the maximum volume change in the dike is 200-300\:m³, with a corresponding pressure drop of 1-2~MPa and pressure recovery equal to the pressure drop. Accompanying these volumetric sources is a single force with magnitude of 5 × 10⁸~N, consistent with melt advection in response to the pressure transients. The source-time history of the three components of this force confirms that significant mass movement starts in the sill and triggers a mass movement response in the dike within ∼ 5~s. Such source behavior is consistent with the opening of an escape pathway for accumulated gases from slow pressurization of the sill driven by magma crystallization. The opening of a pathway for pent-up gases in the sill and rapid evacuation of this separated gas phase induces the pressure drop. Pressure recovery in the magma filling the sill is driven by diffusion of gases from the resulting supersaturated melt into bubbles. Assuming a penny-shaped crack at ambient pressure of 40~MPa, the observed pressure and volume variations can be modeled with the following attributes: crack radius, (100~m), crack aperture, (5~m), bubble number density, (10¹⁰ - 10¹²\:m^-3), initial bubble radius, (10^-6\:m), final bubble radius, ( ∼ 10^-5\:m), and net decrease of gas concentration in the melt, (0.01~wt%).