Monitoring activity in Mount Melbourne, Antarctica, by multi-temporal SAR interferometry based on the ICOPS algorithm

Monitoring active volcanoes is necessary to analyze their current status to pose a mitigation hazard. Mount Melbourne is an active volcano that has erupted in the past, and future eruptions are possible. This condition could threaten future eruptions, particularly near scientific bases. Jang Bogo, a South Korean research station, is located only 30 km from the summit and could be affected by significant ash fallout in case of an explosive eruption. This condition leads to the necessity of observing Mount Melbourne’s activity frequently. This study used Sentinel-1 SAR data acquired from 2017 to 2024 to monitor the volcanic activity of Mount Melbourne by utilizing InSAR multitemporal time-series analysis implementing the improved combined scatterers interferometry with optimized point scatterers (ICOPS) method. The ICOPS method combined persistent scatterer (PS) and distributed scatterer (DS) with measurement point (MP) optimization based on convolutional neural network (CNN) and optimized hot spot analysis (OHSA). The ICOPS measurement results maintain reliable MP along the Mount Melbourne summit and around Jang Bogo station. The absence of GPS stations around these two areas makes it difficult to validate the result with the ground truth measurement, so the comparison with another method, small baseline (SBAS) measurement, is made to evaluate the reliability of the ICOPS measurement points. The comparison between the MP from ICOPS and the SBAS methods shows a good correlation with R² of about 0.8134 in the Melbourne area and 0.8678 in the Jang Bogo area. The selected time-series plot around the summit of Mount Melbourne and the Jang Bogo area shows a stable trend of surface deformation. Thus, a total accumulated deformation of around 0.82 cm and an average deformation of about 0.10 cm/year was found around Mount Melbourne. Meanwhile, the Jang Bogo area exhibits a total deformation of about 0.15 cm with an average deformation of about 0.02. Overall, this research is a preliminary study of the ability of the ICOPS algorithm to monitor volcanic activity in snow-covered areas.