VAST: A program to locate and analyse volcanic thermal anomalies automatically from remotely sensed data

VAST is a program written in C to calibrate thermal data for active volcanoes from the satellite-borne Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), locate thermally anomalous pixels containing active volcanic features, and produce output useful for monitoring activity at the target volcano. Testing the software on sub-images of active volcanic features at Mount Etna, Vulcano and Stromboli volcanoes, Italy, showed that VAST was capable of providing reliable data for feature location, dimensions and thermal flux. Installation of similar software at inexpensive direct read-out stations may allow near-real-time thermal monitoring of many of the world's otherwise unmonitored volcanoes. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.