Application of Land Surface Temperature Derived from ASTER TIR to Identify Volcanic Gas Emission around Bandung Basin

Gas emission in volcanic areas is one of the features that can be used for geothermal exploration and to monitor volcanic activity. Volcanic gases are usually emitted in permeable zones in geothermal fields. The use of thermal infrared radiometers (TIR) onboard of advanced spaceborne thermal emission and reflection radiometers (ASTER) aims to detect thermal anomalies at the ground surface related to gas emissions from permeable zones. The study area is located around Bandung Basin, West Java (Indonesia), particularly the Papandayan and Domas craters. This area was chosen because of the easily detected land surface temperature (LST) following emissivity and vegetation corrections (Tcveg). The ASTER TIR images used in this study were acquired by direct night and day observation, including observations made using visible to near-infrared radiometers (VNIR). Field measurements of volcanic gases composed of SO2 and CO2 were performed at three different zones for each of the craters. The measured SO2 concentration was found to be constant over time, but CO2 concentration showed some variation in the craters. We obtained results suggesting that SO2 gas measurements and Tcveg are highly correlated. At Papandayan crater, the SO2 gas concentration was 334.34 ppm and the Tcveg temperature was 35.67 °C, results that are considered highly anomalous. The same correlation was also found at Domas crater, which showed an increased SO2 gas concentration of 35.39 ppm located at a high-anomaly Tcveg of 30.65 °C. Therefore, the ASTER TIR images have potential to identify volcanic gases as related to high Tcveg.