Abstract

Assessing volcanic hazard in regions of distributed volcanism is challenging because of the uncertain location of future vents. A statistical-mechanical strategy to forecast future vent locations was recently proposed. Here we further develop and test that strategy with analog models. We stress a gelatin block in controlled conditions and observe air-filled crack trajectories. We use the observed surface arrivals to sample the distributions of parameters describing the stress state of the gelatin block, combining deterministic crack trajectory simulations with a Monte Carlo approach. We find the algorithm retrieves the stress imposed on the gelatin and successfully forecasts the arrival points of subsequent cracks in the same experimental setups. We discuss how the approach may be used to gain insight on the stress state of regions of distributed volcanism.