Study of the variations of the feeding system at Mt. Etna during the paroxysmal activities by using infrasonic data.

The maim objective of this work is to investigate the structure of the superficial portion of the plumbing system at Mt. Etna in terms of interconnection among the conduits and internal variations linked to eruptive activity. For this purpose, the lava fountains that occurred in the years from 2011 to 2015 were taken into consideration, for a total of 51 events, and the infrasonic signals recorded by two stations were analysed. We extracted the infrasonic events, and analysed the evolution in time of the spectral content by using normalized and non-normalized pseudospectrograms, peak and mean frequency values. In addition, the sources of the events were located. We noted how, although the eruptions took place at South-East and Voragine craters, the infrasonic events recorded before and after the lava fountains are mostly generated by the North-East Crater. Most of the energy of these events is comprised in the frequency range 0.1 – 2 Hz. Furthermore, in most of the lava fountain episodes, we observed a decrease in the frequency peaks of the infrasonic events after the eruptions. To interpret the variations of the plumbing system responsible for these spectral changes, as well as the interconnection among the conduits feeding the main craters, we model the infrasonic events from the North-East Crater as an acoustic resonance of the crater and conduit, whose length changes with time as magma ascends or descends in the conduit.