Indonesia - Indonesia's Mt. Merapi may be preparing to erupt: expert

A team of researchers has detected high volcanic activity on Mount Merapi, which is located on the border of Central Java and Yogyakarta provinces in Indonesia.

Following months of observation, the Indonesian-Japanese joint research team has found increasing levels of magma leading to the volcano’s summit reservoir, known as “inflation”.

"After its eruption in 2010, we detected that Merapi inflated again very quickly. This means that Merapi is a very active volcano,” Masato Iguchi, a researcher from the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University, said in Jakarta yesterday.

Iguchi made the announcement while presenting a report titled “Multi-Disciplinary Hazard Reduction from Earthquakes and Volcanoes in Indonesia”.

To detect volcanic activity and ground deformation, the Japanese volcanologist said, global positioning system devices were installed on three Indonesian volcanoes, namely Mt. Guntur (West Java), Mt. Sinabung (North Sumatra) and Mt. Merapi.

The last eruption of Mt. Merapi took place in 2010. Before that, Merapi had erupted in 2001 and 2006.

This indicated that there were some periods in which the volcano had no deformation until it inflated and then erupted.

The report of the team’s findings is part of a three-year project funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Japan Science and Technology.

The project, which is led by Hery Harjono, an earthquake researcher from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, will end later this year.

During their observation work, Iguchi said, the joint team witnessed drastic changes in the chemical deposits on Mt. Merapi between October and November 2011.

"More work is needed to predict possible eruption scenarios, volcano monitoring as well as countermeasures to mitigate potential volcanic disasters,” said Iguchi.

Tomoyuki Tada, a senior representative with the JICA, said the “Multi-Disciplinary Hazard Reduction from Earthquakes and Volcanoes in Indonesia” was the first time the JICA and the JST had collaborated in Indonesia.

"This is a very important project as Indonesia and Japan are well-known for natural disasters,” he said.

During the project, which began in 2009, three significant natural disasters occurred: the Merapi volcanic eruption in 2010, the tsunami in Mentawai Islands regency, West Sumatra and the quake-triggered tsunami in eastern Japan.

So powerful was the Merapi eruption in 2010 that the number of people killed totaled more than 270, according to local authority data.

The Mentawai tsunami, meanwhile, claimed more than 370 lives with hundreds other reported missing.

"At that time, we used our network of researchers working on this project. This strengthened our cooperation in disaster management and post-disaster response,” said Tada.

Citing an example, he said the JICA sent a Japanese disaster rescue team to Indonesia following the Merapi eruption and Mentawai tsunami.

While after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, workshops and seminars were held in Japan utilising the network established through this project.

Surono, the National Centre for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation, said the possibility of an eruption remains unknown. “We don’t know yet whether it [the eruption] will occur during its two-year-period or within its four-year-period,” said Surono.

Elly Burhaini Faizal

The Jakarta Post

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