PNRA18_00208 MIMIC Multidisciplinary Investigations on mount Melbourne volcano and its fumarolic Ice Caves (PI Gaetano Giudice)
Mt. Melbourne is a quiescent stratovolcano located close to the Mario Zucchelli Station (about 40 km)
Recently, the presence of large fumarolic ice caves (FIC), formed by the heat released from fumaroles and ground, was confirmed on Melbourne
in the framework of the PNRA Ice-Volc Project. Besides, in the last XXXIII PNRA Antarctic Campaign, some test flights of an airborne Ice Penetrating Radar (IPR) were conducted on the caldera (see: in support documentation) revealing the presence of large passages within the ice cap that showed a good correlation with the position of the FIC surveyed by Ice-Volc Project. IPR data also showed a good snow/ice internal layering likely related to the presence of tephra layers probably due to the most recent eruptive activity
The possible presence of volcanic structures buried under the ice cover will be investigated by means of both a RES system and a single pulse
radar. The RES system works in 24V d.c. with a maximum peak power of 1-10kW and exploits Radarteam (40MHz) and GSSI (16MHz) antennas
specially modified for this project. Regular grids of airborne measurement with lines spacing of 50 m will be performed on the Mt. Melbourne
Caldera exploiting different frequencies antenna. Based on the obtained results, some part of interest will be investigated with more dense grids by
on-ground measures. The identification of englacial tephra will be performed by means of a GPR system equipped with 40-200-400 MHz
antennas.