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During eruptions, volcanoes produce air-pressure waves inaudible for the human ear called infrasound, which are very helpful for detecting early signs of magma at the surface. Compared to violent ash-rich explosions, recording more discreet atmospheric disturbances from effusive eruptions remains a practical challenge. Wind and human activity are other powerful sources of unwanted infrasound noise masking volcanic ones. At Nyiragongo volcano (D.R. Congo), close to a one-million urban area, the drainage of the world’s largest lava lake concomitant with short-duration lava flows on its flank and the renewal of an effusive eruption within its crater a few months later were a series of major volcanic events in 2021, all monitored with infrasound sensors. First, we explore these records for characterizing the temporal and spatial evolution of the flank eruption on May 22, 2021. In a second step, we show evidence of the infrasonic rumbling of a nascent lava lake starting a few months later detected up to the volcano observatory facilities in Goma city center about 17 km from Nyiragongo’s crater. These results show remarkable local recordings of eruptive infrasound from rural and city-based stations and have significant implication for optimizing future monitoring efforts in a harsh field environment., The 28th IUGG General Assembly (IUGG2023) (Berlin 2023)

International audience; Seismic waves propagating in a porous medium, under favorable conditions , generate measurable electromagnetic fields due to electrokinetic effects. It has been proposed, following experimental and numerical studies , that these so-called ?seismoelectromagnetic ? couplings depend on pore fluid properties. The theoretical frame describing these phenomena are based on the original Biot's theory, assuming that pores are fluid-filled. We study here the impact of a partially saturated medium on amplitudes of those seismoelectric couplings by comparing experimental data to an effective fluid model. We have built a 1 m-length-scale experiment designed for imbibition and drainage of an homogeneous silica sand ; the experimental setup includes a seismic source, acce-lerometers, electric dipoles and capacitance probes in order to monitor the seismic and seismoelectric fields during water saturation. Apparent velocities and frequency spectra are derived from seismic and electric measurements during experiments in varying saturation conditions. Amplitudes of the seismic and seismoelectric waves and their ratios (i.e. transfer functions) are discussed using a spectral analysis performed by Continuous Wavelet Transform (CWT). The experiment results reveal that the amplitude ratiosof seismic to co-seismic electric signals remain rather constant as a function of the water saturation. This result show good agreement with theoretically predicted transfer functions including effective fluid properties and some recent electrokinetic models. This experiment also show the evidence of the dynamic effect in seis-moelectric coupling.

International audience; Energy dissipation is observed on seismic data when a wave propagates through a porous medium, involving different frequency regimes depending on the nature of rock and fluid types. We focus here on the role of partial fluid saturation in unconsolidated porous media, looking in particular at P-wave phase velocity and attenuation. The study consists in running an experiment in a sand-filled tank partially saturated with water. Seismic propagation in the tank is generated in the kHz range by hitting a steel ball on a granite plate. Seismic data are recorded by buried accelerometers and injecting or extracting water controls the partial saturation. Several imbibition/drainage cycles were performed between the water and gas residual saturations. A Continuous Wavelet Transform applied on seismic records allowed us to extract the direct P-wave at each receiver.We observe an hysteresis in phase velocities and inverse quality factors between imbibition and drainage. Phase velocities and inverse quality factors are then jointly inverted to get a final poro-visco-elastic model of the partially saturated sand that satisfactorily reproduces the data. The model formulation consists in generalizing the Biot theory to effective properties of the fluid and medium (permeability and bulk modulus) in order to properly explain the phase velocity variation as a function of the saturation. The strong level of attenuation measured experimentally is further explained by an anelastic effect due to grain to grain sliding, adding to Biot's losses. This study shows that fluid distribution at microscopic scale has strong influence on the attenuation of direct P-waves at macroscopic scale and confirms that seismic prospection may be a powerful tool for the characterization of transport phenomena in porous media.

In order to analyse the role of partial saturation on direct P-waves phase velocity and attenuation, we performed a laboratory experiment in the kiloHertz range to avoid scale effects between field studies and traditional ultrasonic laboratory measurements. This experiment consists in a sand-filled tank equiped with accelerometers and water capacitance probes, were seismic propagation is generated by hitting a steel ball on a granite plate. Several imbibition/drainage cycles were performed between the water and gas residual saturations. Seismic data were processed by a Continuous Wavelet Transform using the complex Morlet wavelet which was numerically validated using a viscoelastic 2D code for wave propagation (Specfem2D). Phase velocity of direct P-wave decreases with the increase of water content, which is quite consistent with Biot-Gassmann-Wood (BGW) limit of the Biot's theory for both imbibition and drainage. This behaviour indicates that the fluid mixture (gaz and water) can be considered as an effective fluid, which is typical of field seismic applications. In this experiment, attenuation is very strong and cannot be fully explained by the macroscopic fluid flow of Biot's theory. It is necessary to introduce a viscoelastic contribution linked to the grain to grain overall losses, which are described by a constant Q-model. Moreover, hysteresis between imbibition and drainage are observed and explained by introducing an effective permeability of the mixture depending on water and gas relative permeabilities.; Afin d'analyser le rôle de la saturation partielle sur la vitesse de phase et l'atténuation des ondes P directes, nous avons élaboré une expérience en laboratoire dans la gamme du kiloHertz. Celle-ci permet une corrélation avec les mesures de terrain et limite les effets d'échelle induits par l'utilisation des traditionnelles mesures ultrasoniques. Le montage expérimental est composé d'un container rempli de sable, équipé d'accéléromètres et de sondes de teneur en eau. Une propagation d'onde est générée par une source mécanique constituée d'une bille en métal frappant une plaque de granite. Plusieurs cycles d'imbibition/drainage sont réalisés entre les saturations résiduelles en eau et en air. Une transformée continue en ondelette a été choisie pour le traitement des données sismiques et validée numériquement par une simulation de propagation d'ondes dans un milieu viscoélastique 2D (code Specfem2D). En imbibition et en drainage, la vitesse de phase décroît avec l'augmentation de la saturation, ce qui peut être expliqué par la limite Biot-Gassmann-Wood (BGW) de la théorie de Biot. Ce comportement, typique des mesures de terrain, indique qu'il est possible de considérer le mélange de fluides (eau et air) comme un fluide effectif. L'interprétation de l'atténuation est plus complexe et ne peut être expliquée par le mécanisme de relaxation de flux macroscopique de la théorie de Biot. Il est nécessaire d'introduire une contribution viscoélastique reliée aux pertes frictionelles grain-à-grain et décrite par un modèle à Q constant. De plus, un hystérésis entre imbibition et drainage est observé et expliqué en introduisant une perméabilité effective du mélange, dépendante des perméabilités relatives à l'eau et à l'air.