State-of-the-art technology used to explore mud volcanoes in Romania

The National Research and Development Institute for Earth Physics (INCDFP) announced that it used state-of-the-art equipment for the first time to explore the famous mud volcanoes in Romania’s Buzău county.

The team from Geo Edu Lab within INCDFP mapped the subsurface of a mud volcano in 3D, thus obtaining a more detailed and new perspective of the underground structure of these natural volcano-shaped formations.

“In 2023, GeoEduLab, together with the Iris Instruments team, carried out a measurement campaign in the Pâclele Mici volcano area. The campaign used FullWaver equipment, an innovative approach to geoelectric mapping used for the first time in Romania, but also internationally for this purpose,” said INCDFP, quoted by Agerpres.

With the FullWaver system, the experts can get 3D information from depths of over 100m. According to INCDFP, this method has not been used before in Romania or anywhere in the world for this purpose.

The results have been published in the Applied Sciences journal.

Now, the GeoEduLab team has started a new project to deeply explore the depths of the mud volcanoes. Drone flights equipped with Lidar sensors will be used to map the terrain in detail, photogrammetry will capture high-resolution images, and thermal sensors will be used to detect temperature variations. In addition, seismic and gravimetry measurements will be performed, INCDFP said.

“Acquiring, processing, and integrating this data is an ambitious project that has not been done anywhere in the world. Thus, we hope to better understand not only the volcanoes in the Buzău area but also the processes underlying this type of geological phenomenon all over the world,” the same source stated.

(Photo source: Facebook/INCDFP)