Urlaub, Morelia , Petersen, Florian , Gross, Felix, Bonforte, Alessandro, Puglisi, Giuseppe, Guglielmino, Francesco, Krastel, Sebastian, Lange, Dietrich and Kopp, Heidrun (2018) Gravitational collapse of Mount Etna's south-eastern flank. [Talk] In: Physics of Volcanoes 2018. , 01.03.-02.03.2018, Kiel, Germany .

Abstract

Mount Etna’s southeastern flank is densely populated and hosts numerous world heritage sites. It has long been known that it slides into the Ionian Sea at rates of centimetres per year with highest displacement rates at the coast. The prevailing understanding is that pressurization of the feeding system and magmatic intrusions control Mount Etna’s flank movement and not gravitational forces acting on the flank of the volcano, although this has also been proposed. So far, it has not been possible to distinguish between these processes, because no data on the offshore deformation were available until we conducted the first long-term seafloor displacement monitoring campaign from April 2016 until July 2017. Combining our data with onshore ground deformation data shows that deformation increases away from the magmatic system. We suggest that the bulk of Mount Etna’s flank movement is driven by gravity and that inflation and magma overpressure cause episodic accelerations in addition to gravitational sliding.

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