Evidence for a lava lake on Mt. Michael volcano, Saunders Island (South Sandwich Islands) from Landsat, Sentinel-2 and ASTER satellite imagery

Mt. Michael is an active stratovolcano on Saunders Island in the South Sandwich Islands; a remote, oceanic island arc in the southern Atlantic Ocean, bordering the Southern Ocean. The arc contains the only active volcanoes in the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands British Overseas Territory, yet little is known of their activity. Despite lava lakes being extremely rare with only a few global examples, previous analyses of satellite AVHRR imagery of Mt. Michael in the 1990s showed persistent thermal anomalies not associated with magma overflowing the crater. This suggested the existence of a lava lake inside Mt. Michael's crater. However, their study relied on 1 km resolution imagery, and there have been no long-term investigations to determine if this is a persistent feature.

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