Employing both absolute and relative gravimeters, we carried out three hybrid microgravity surveys at Etna volcano between 2007 and 2009. The repeated measurements highlighted the spatio-time evolution of the gravity field associated with the volcanic unrest. We detected a gravity increase attained an amplitude of about 80 µGal on the summit area of the volcano between July 2008 and July 2009. The observed gravity increase could reflect mass accumulations into shallow magma storage system of the volcano located at 1÷2 km below sea level. We present here data and the advantages in using the combined approach of relative and absolute measurements performed at Etna volcano.PublishedSaint Petersburg, Russia2.6. TTC - Laboratorio di gravimetria, magnetismo ed elettromagnetismo in aree attiveope

Currenti, Gilda

D'Agostino, Giancarlo

Del Negro, Ciro

Di Stefano, Agnese

Germak, Alessandro

Greco, Filippo

Napoli, Rosalba

Origlia, Claudio

Pistorio, Antonio

Scandura, Danila

Sicali, Antonino

English

Earth-prints

 1 
ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE GRAVITY MEASUREMENTS AT ETNA VOLCANO (ITALY) 
 
F. Greco
1
, G. Currenti
1, G. D’Agostino2, C. Del Negro1, A. Di Stefano1, A. Germak2, 
R. Napoli
1
, C. Origlia
2
, A. Pistorio
1, 3
, D. Scandura
1
, A. Sicali
1
 
 
1
 Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia – Sezione di Catania, Italy, Fax: +39 095 435801, Tel: +39 095 
7165800 - filippo.greco@ct.ingv.it; gilda.currenti@ct.ingv.it; ciro.delnegro@ct.ingv.it; agnese.distefano@ct.ingv.it; 
rosalba.napoli@ct.ingv.it; antonio.pistorio@ct.ingv.it; danila.scandura@ct.ingv.it; antonino.sicali@ct.ingv.it 
  
2
 Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, INRiM, Torino, Italy, Fax: +39 011 3919926, Tel: +39 0113919919 - 
g.dagostino@inrim.it; a.germak@inrim.it; c.origlia@inrim.it 
 
3
 Dipartimento Elettrico, Elettronico e Sistemistico – Università degli Studi di Catania, Italy - 
antonio.pistorio@ct.ingv.it 
 
Abstract 
Keywords: absolute and relative gravity, Mt Etna volcano. 
 
Employing both absolute and relative gravimeters, we carried out three hybrid microgravity surveys at Etna volcano between 
2007 and 2009. The repeated measurements highlighted the spatio-time evolution of the gravity field associated with the volcanic 
unrest. We detected a gravity increase attained an amplitude of about 80 µGal on the summit area of the volcano between July 
2008 and July 2009. The observed gravity increase could reflect mass accumulations into shallow magma storage system of the 
volcano located at 1÷2 km below sea level. We present here data and the advantages in using the combined approach of relative 
and absolute measurements performed at Etna volcano.  
 
Introduction 
 
Detection of clear gravity signals associated with the renewal of the volcanic activity and the emerging need of 
characterizing the dynamic changes of subsurface systems have led to increased application of microgravity method 
in time-lapsed monitoring, also known as 4D gravity. Since the 1980s, we have been intensively monitoring the 
gravity field on Mt Etna to detect underground mass movements due to the volcanic activity, which could trigger a 
pre-eruptive state. Through relative gravity measurements, we were able to reveal significant correlations between 
eruptive activity of Etna volcano and temporal changes in the gravity field, occurring with different patterns (Budetta 
et al., 1999; Carbone et al., 2003; Branca et al., 2003; Bonforte et al., 2007; Carbone and Greco, 2007; Greco et al., 
2010). 
Conventionally, Etna’s gravity network has been traditionally based on discrete relative measurements referred 
to fixed reference site. Recently, with the aim of compare relative microgravity measurements routinely acquired on 
Etna with absolute gravity observations, we performed repeated surveys using transportable absolute gravimeters. 
Since 2007, measurements of the free-fall acceleration (g) have been carried out in five sites on Etna using the new 
version of the IMGC-02 absolute gravimeter. In 2009, others 8 new absolute stations were added and measured using 
the absolute gravimeter Microg LaCoste FG5#238 (owned by ENI s.p.a.). 
 
 
 
Gravity networks at Etna volcano  
 
Relative stations and measurements 
 
The relative gravity network of Mt Etna is currently made up of 71 benchmarks (Fig. 1) located 0.5 to 4 km 
apart and covering an area of about 400 km
2
. Four array subsets have been distinguished in different sectors of the 
volcano. The sub-arrays differ from one another in station density, access (determined by snow coverage), and the 
time required to collect gravity measurements. Each sub-array can be occupied independently, optimizing the 
flexibility in data collection to accommodate variations in activity and accessibility of the volcano. Measurements 
over the entire Etna microgravity network are generally conducted once a year when also absolute measures are 
performed. More frequent surveys are carried out in the southern and in the summit area of the volcano (almost 1 
survey/month; in the latter only during the summer time). Almost all gravity benchmarks are close or coincident with 
GPS stations. Since 1994, discrete gravity measurements at Mt Etna have performed using a Scintrex CG-3M 
 2 
gravimeter. This instrument, even when used under the unfavorable conditions encountered on Mt Etna (rough 
unsurfaced roads, large elevation differences, etc.), yields a high precision thanks to its low sensitivity to both shocks 
and external temperature changes. The uncertainties in measurements collected by the Scintrex CG-3M gravimeter 
on Etna ranges between 10 and 15 µGal at the 95% confidence interval. 
 
Absolute stations and measurements 
 
Due to the logistical difficulties existing on Mt Etna, the arrangement of the absolute station network mainly 
depends on the buildings present which provide protection for the instrumentations. The first 4 Etna stations for 
absolute measurements were installed in 2007 on the volcanic edifice, allowing measurements along a North–South 
profile crossing the summit craters at elevations ranging between 1250 (North flank) and 1700 m a.s.l. (South flank). 
Another station was installed outside the volcanic edifice, inside the gravity laboratory of INGV (Istituto Nazionale 
di Geofisica e Vulcanologia) – Catania (CTA) used as reference. In order to improve its geometry, the absolute 
gravity network was renewed and integrated in 2009 with stations arranged as a ring around the volcano at elevations 
of between 1500 and 2000 m a.s.l. Besides the CTA station, the Etna gravity network for absolute measurements is 
now composed of 13 stations that cover quasi-regularly the volcano edifice between 1500 and 2800 m a.s.l. (see Fig. 
1 for location). 
Since 2007, absolute gravity measurements were carried out using the IMGC-02 gravimeter. In 2009, the 
Microg LaCoste FG5#238 was also employed. The CTA and Serra La Nave (SLN) stations were used to compare 
both instruments (Fig. 2). The free-air vertical gradients obtained from relative gravity measurements at each 
observation site were used to refer the absolute gravity values at the same elevation (Fig. 3).  
 
 
 
Fig. 1 - Sketch map of Etna showing the microgravity networks for relative and absolute measurements. The inset at the bottom 
left shows the location of Etna volcano with respect to Sicily. The different symbols used for relative stations are to distinguish 
the four arrays in different sectors of the volcano that compose the entire network. The orange circles indicate the absolute station 
arranged along a North-South profile and measured by the IMGC-02 gravimeter. The blue triangles indicate the absolute stations 
arranged as a ring around the volcano edifice and measured by the FG5#238 gravimeter. 
 
 3 
 
 
Fig. 2 – Absolute gravity measurements carried out at CTA and SLN stations using the the IMGC-02 and Microg LaCoste 
FG5#238 gravimeters. 
 
Hybrid gravity 
 
We applied the combined use of absolute and relative gravimeters as hybrid method (Furuya et al., 2003) to 
extend the potential of gravity measurements for investigating the Etna volcanic area (Fig. 3). The hybrid approach 
allow of optimizing techniques and strategies of the microgravity surveys on the Etna’s network, ensuring an 
improvement in the quality of the data. On large volcanoes such as Mt Etna, operators using an absolute gravimeter 
are not obligated to reach “stable” reference stations that are generally far from the active areas (Etna reference 
stations, unaffected by volcano-related gravity changes, are about 20 km away from the summit zone), at the cost of 
propagating-measurement errors and greatly increasing measurement time. Thus, the time required to accomplish 
discrete surveys drastically decreases and the reliability of discrete data improves.  
The 13 absolute stations located on Etna volcano were used as references for relative measurements acquired in 
different benchmarks of the relative gravity networks (Fig. 1). Basically, we connect three or four relative gravity 
benchmarks at each absolute site, so that the height precision absolute values for all relative benchmarks were 
obtained by adding the differences (Δg) between each absolute station with the relative ones to the absolute value 
measured at each reference point. The uncertainly affecting absolute gravity data in different stations ranges between 
4 and 30 µGal, while the error affecting the single Δg between an absolute and relative station generally ranging 
between 3 and 7 µGal. This strategy, allows also to minimize the error due to the instrumental drift that significantly 
increases when spring relative instruments are subjected to mechanical and thermal shocks during long vehicle 
transportation. On the other hand, the availability of absolute points very close to areas experiencing volcanic unrest 
episodes, where significant gravity anomalies are expected, represents a crucial step in volcanic monitoring, reducing 
the typical interpretation ambiguities for single-component methods. 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
Fig. 3 – On the top: relative spring gravimeters Scintrex CG-3M (on left) and CG-5 (on the right) used for relative measurements. 
On the bottom: schema of the hybrid gravity method (on the left); example of vertical gravity gradient measurements (in the 
middle) with schedule procedure (on the right).  
 
 
Gravity changes during 2008-2009 period 
 
The absolute gravity variations and the gravity data from the whole Etna network were combined and contoured 
over July 2008 – July 2009 time interval (Fig. 4). Combined gravity contour map is mainly characterized by a 
positive variation involving the summit area of the volcano. The annual gravity variation shows a wavelength of 
about 10 km elongated in the North-South direction and with a maximum amplitude of about 80 µGal. The map also 
shows an absence of important gravity variations elsewhere at the scale of the volcano. No significant vertical 
ground movements are evidenced by GPS measurements in this sector of the volcano in the same time interval.  
Since gravity measurements alone cannot unambiguously identify the shape of the source at depth, the similarity 
in wavelength and position of the 2008-2009 positive gravity variation with respect to previous gravity changes 
observed in the same zone suggests that a mass increase likely to take place within the same area of the previous 
gravity variations. We inverted the recorded gravity changes searching for the source parameters that minimize the 
misfit between the observed and computed gravity changes. As forward model, we used the analytical solutions for 
all the source geometries (Singh, 1977; Clark et al., 1986; Blakely, 1995) and included the topography, taking into 
account the altitude difference between the gravity stations and the source. The results show that, despite the 
different geometries, all the sources can reproduce the observed anomaly with a misfit lower than 20 μGal. Finally, 
we applied an oblate ellipsoidal source and the best fit to the recorded data (misfit less than 20 µGal ) is given for a 
source located at a depth of 2000 m bsl, with the major semi-axes of 1100 m in the direction North-South and the 
other two semi-axes b=c= 350 m. A density contrast of 400 kg/m
3
 is necessary to justify the measured gravity 
change. The calculations performed show a mass increase of about 200 x 10
9
 kg, which yields at least a source 
volume of about 500 x 10
6
 m
3
 considering a density contrast of 400 kg/m
3
. 
 5 
 
 
Fig. 4 – The annual absolute gravity variations observed and the gravity data from the entire Etna network (relative 
measurements) were combined and contoured over July 2008 – July 2009 time interval (at 10 µGal intervals). Errors affecting 
relative gravity changes are typically 10 µGal; larger errors affect gravity changes along the Summit Profile (within 15 µGal).  
 
Conclusive remarks 
 
For the first time at Etna volcano we employed the combined use of absolute and relative gravimeters as hybrid 
method to extend the potential of gravity measurements for surveying the Etna volcanic area. The hybrid approach 
allowed of optimizing techniques and strategies of the repeated microgravity surveys on the Etna’s network, ensuring 
an improvement in the quality of the data.  
The combined absolute and relative gravity data have permitted the detection of mass redistribution, to define its 
temporal and spatial evolution and to recognize processes involving volcanic activities minimizing the ambiguity 
typical for single component methods. 
 
Acknowledgement 
 
We thank Eni S.p.a., Exploration & Production Division for providing the FG5 n° 238 absolute gravimeter and 
sponsoring this study. 
 
References 
 
Blakely R.J.; 1995; Potential Theory in Gravity and Magnetic Applications. Cambridge University Press, New York. 
Bonforte A., Carbone D., Greco F., Palano D.; 2007; Intrusive mechanism of the 2002 NE-rift eruption at Mt Etna 
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ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE GRAVITY MEASUREMENTS AT ETNA VOLCANO (ITALY)

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ABSOLUTE AND RELATIVE GRAVITY MEASUREMENTS AT ETNA VOLCANO (ITALY)

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