The objectives of this project, funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, are to establish open-data, real-time, multi-sensor community experiments on active volcanoes in a number of settings around the world. A key component of the project is the development of high-bandwidth satellite telemetry that will provide real-time capabilities even in the most remote locations. Open, continuous data-streams in place before volcanic eruptions promise to revolutionize the field of volcanology by first increasing scientific understanding of eruptions and then driving the development of forecasts that are timely within the hours to months of “run-up” to eruptions, and improving forecasts as real-time data streams in.

Fundamental volcano-science questions center around the different roles of magma vs. gas flux in fueling and triggering eruptions. It is currently impossible to answer these questions without contemporary pre-eruption time-series from seismometers sensitive to magma movement, gas instruments that measure the degassing process as magma evolves toward eruption, and geodetic measurements of the rate of volume change in the magma reservoir. Such data have individually shown precursory signals prior to recent eruptions, but are rarely collected in concert and used in real-time to build forecasts.

The two initial targets for the AVERT project were two neighboring volcanoes, Okmok and Cleveland in Alaska, which both erupt frequently and explosively and are currently displaying different signs of unrest. Okmok is a “closed” volcano; the ground surface has been uplifting for years, a signal that has been hindcast to reveal stress-driven triggering weeks prior to the 2008 eruption. During field campaigns from 2022–2024, we augmented the existing Okmok network to a total of 8 continuous GPS instruments to inform real-time forecast models. Cleveland is an “open” volcano, currently extruding a lava dome and commonly emitting a gas plume, and yet these gases are not measured in real-time. We brought both new GPS and gas data streams to Cleveland, and deployed additional seismic instruments to establish a robust, permanent seismic network. The multi-sensor arrays on Okmok and Cleveland have served as testbeds for the developing capabilities of satellite telemetry and field-testing our instrument platform. This work was conducted in collaboration with the Alaska Volcano Observatory.

In 2023, we began a collaboration the Observatorio Vulcanológico y Sismológico de Costa Rica (OVSICORI) to deploy a new iteration of the AVERT instrument platform, perform field testing of Starlink for satellite telemetry, and improve the general state of instrumentation at Poás volcano, in Costa Rica. This new network served as a basis to host an international, collaborative field workshop wherein participants brought a wide range of instruments to create a 'snapshot' of the volcano over a week in February, 2024. More information can be found in the news section of our website.