Crustal deformation and volcanic earthquakes associated with the recent volcanic activity of Iwojima Volcano, Japan

Iwojima is an active volcanic island located within a 10 km wide submarine caldera about 1250 km to the south of Tokyo, Japan. The seismometer and GPS network of National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED) in Iwojima has observed a repeating island wide uplift more than 1 m associated with large number of volcanic earthquakes every several years. During 2006-2012, we observed more than 20000 volcanic earthquakes and an uplift of about 3 m, and precursory volcanic earthquakes and rapid crustal deformation just before the small submarine eruption near the northern coast of Iwojima in April 2012. In a restless volcano such as Iwojima, it is important issue to distinguish whether rapid crustal deformation and intense earthquake activity lead to an eruption or not. According to a long period geodetic observation by Ukawa et al. (2006), the crustal deformation of Iwojima can be classify into 2 phases. The first is an island wide large uplift centering on Motoyama area (the eastern part of the island, the center of the caldera), and the second is contraction and subsidence at local area centering on Motoyama and uplift around that area. They are interpreted by superposition of crustal deformations by a shallow contraction source and a deep seated inflation source beneath Motoyama. The earthquake activity of Iwojima highly correlates with the island wide large uplift, suggesting the earthquakes are almost controlled by a magma accumulation into a deep seated magma chamber. In contrast to the activity, the precursory activity of the eruption in 2012 is deviated from the correlation. The rapid crustal deformation just before and after the eruption in 2012 can be interpreted by rapid inflation and deflation of a shallow sill source about 1km deep, respectively, suggesting that it was caused by a shallow hydrothermal activity. The result shows that we can probably distinguish an abnormal activity related with a volcanic eruption when we observe a volcanic activity deviated from the correlation. Since the beginning of Japanese settlement into Iwojima in 1898, more than 20 phreatic eruptions have been reported, whereas no historical magmatic eruptions have been reported. The eruptive activity probably limited in near ground surface at present in spite of the successive magma injection into the deep magma chamber.