The latest study on Oldonyo Lengai, which is Tanzania’s fourth highest peak and the only active volcano in the country, seems to suggest that an explosion should be expected from the Mountain anytime soon.
“When a volcano is about to erupt, the surrounding land puffs up like a squeezed balloon!” starts the scientific report.
The technical term there is ‘transient deformation.’
Virginia Tech researchers have detected and tracked this short-lived movement for the first time using satellite observations of Ol Doinyo Lengai, the active volcanic mountain in the remote Ngorongoro District of Arusha, Northern Tanzania.
A few months ago, the Virginia Tech researchers worked in conjunction with researchers from Ardhi University, the Tanzanian government, Korea Institute for Geoscience and Mineral Resources, the University of Maryland, and Colgate University.
The Research titled, ‘Detecting Transient Uplift at the Active Volcano Ol Doinyo Lengai in Tanzania with the TZVOLCANO Network,’ was published in late 2024 and which is widely being circulated in 2025.
This is because there have been series of volcanic eruptions being recorded around the world, causing observers to start taking keen interest in the Oldonyo Lengai as well.
According to the study, the increasing pressure inside a volcano’s magma reservoir can cause the land to bulge.
When the pressure decreases, the reservoir deflates again and the land falls back.
“We have been able to detect transient motion in volcanic activity, and this is a precursor for any kind of eruption,” said Ntambila Daud, a graduate student working with Associate Professor D. Sarah Stamps at Virginia Tech’s Geodesy and Tectonophysics Laboratory and an assistant lecturer at Ardhi University.
“This research could help Tanzanian authorities have a better idea of what is happening with the volcano.”
Ol Doinyo Lengai, the mountain of God, is the only active volcano in the world that produces carbonatite lava, which has unusual colouring.
Erupting black or grey but cooling to a bone white, the eruptions represent a constant threat to surrounding communities and compromise tourism and air traffic in the area.
The mountain is located within Engaresero village in the Ngorongoro District of Arusha Region adjacent to Lake Natron.
‘Ol’doinyo Lengai’ rises about 2,100 meters over the East African Rift Valley floor to a height approximately 2,880 meters above sea level, becoming the fourth highest peak in Tanzania.
Historically, the records of Ol Doinyo Lengai eruptions go back to the 1880s.
Since then, the volcano has been periodically active, with the last eruptions occurring between 2006 and 2007.
Observations were spotty until 2016, when the Virginia Tech team installed six sensors on the flanks of the volcano to collect high-precision geodetic data taken from Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS).
That data and data products allow a researcher to measure and better understand Earth’s geometric shape. In addition, an on-site seismometer monitors localized shaking and swelling around the volcano.
Using the GNSS data streams, Daud created computer models that detect potential volcanic signals at Ol Doinyo Lengai due to magma reservoir changes.
The team assessed seven years of continuous GNSS data for transient signals and found rapid uplift spanning March 2022–December 2022 and then steady‐state uplift through August 2023.
“If the difference between the data and the expected pattern is three times larger, it indicates transient deformation in surface motion,” Daud said. “This could signal an impending eruption and aid in eruption forecasting.”
In addition to serving as a potential early-alert system for the communities surrounding Ol Doinyo Lengai, this technique has been applied to other volcanoes such as Long Valley Caldera in California and Alaska’s Akutan volcano.
“The approach that Daud used in this paper provided important steps forward in our understanding of the dynamic magma plumbing system of Ol Doinyo Lengai,” Stamps said.
Ntambila Daud, D. Sarah Stamps, Kang-Hyeun Ji, Elifuraha Saria, Mong-Han Huang, Aubreya Adams