Piton de la Fournaise volcano forms the SE part of La Réunion, an oceanic basaltic island, with high eruptive frequency of the Piton de La Fournaise volcano of two eruptions per year.
Froger et al. (2004) present Interferograms over the August 2003 Piton de la Fournaise eruption. They show a 3 by 3 km asymmetric pattern of range changes centred on the Dolomieu crater northern flank, corresponding to 30 cm of displacement towards the satellite east of the eruptive fissures and 7 cm away from the satellite west of the fissures. The show that the deformation was caused by dyke emplacement below exisiting fissures with a base lying around 1520 m a.s.l.
Peltier et al. (2010) present deformation data, GPS and InSAR, covering the 2003–2009 period presented and they identify two main areas in the ground deformation (1) the eastern flank affected by old lava flow subsidence and (2) the summit cone highly disturbed by eruptive activity. They also identify using time series that the summit area deformation agrees with the cGPS trends with small long‐term (weeks/months) ground displacements preceding eruptions (0.05–0.35 m.y−1 ) and large rapid ground displacements linked to eruptions.
The Observatoire Volcanologique du Piton de la Fournaise (OVPF) was founded in 1980, as part of the Insitut de Physique du Globe de Paris (IPGP). Since 2004, the volcano observatory has implemented a continuous GPS (cGPS) network. The cGPS network includes ten stations around the summit cone or at its base, and two reference stations (ENCg, GITg) located 5 km from the summit.