Seismic measurements

Birth of our summit seismic station

A one-component seismometer was installed by the Dipartimento di Georisorse e Territorio of the University of Udine near the summit of Stromboli in October 1989. Regular tremor recordings are stored since May 1990. In May 1992 the instrumentation was upgraded to a three-component station. This allows the detection of motion in all three space dimensions. An additional data channel was used in order to store a time signal. Regarding this, we would like to thank PRECITEL SA for letting us experiment with their instrumentation.

A detailed technical description of the station can be found in the report: A three-component data acquisition system for monitoring the seismic activity at Stromboli volcano.

Left:

This box contained the actual seismometer. The mirror was used to see a bulb level.

Right:

Another box housed the transmitter used for relaying data down to Stromboli village.

All equipment was powered by solar cells. In winter, recordings were sometimes interrupted briefly as a result of insufficient supply of electricity during bad weather. The small object above Franco Iacop's green cap is the transmitting antenna!

The long way from Stromboli summit to you

Left:

Data transmission from the summit station ended at the office of Stromboli volcano guides near the big church of San Vincenzo.

Right:

Inside the house were the receiver, PC for data recording, modem for data transfer to Udine and a backup power supply.

From Udine summaries of the data were downloaded via telephone link. Roberto then uploaded it to SwissEduc at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland for presentation on these pages.

The bulk of the data were transferred in a more traditional and economic way (magnetic tape via boat and rail) to Udine...

Meteosat image 24. March 1996, visible channel (C03)

The end of our summit seismic station

As the volcano is now monitored by a new network of INGV broadband seismometers for Civil Defence purposes, one of which located very close to our previous summit seismic station, this was not rebuilt after the damage. Its short period sensor makes it, in fact, obsolete if compared to the new broadband network.

Since 2003 we maintain another seismic station located in the village of Stromboli, specifically in San Bartolo, mainly for educational purposes, including presentation on Stromboli online.