Combining the PASSCAL and EarthScope Texan instrument pools for 3D and 3C imaging of the High Lava Plains, Oregon
Abstract
In early September 2008, 67 scientists, students, and volunteers deployed 2612 Texan short-period seismic recorders and 120 RT-130 recorders from the PASSCAL and EarthScope instrument pools, and fired 15 seismic sources spaced across the High Lava Plains (HLP) of eastern Oregon and adjacent parts of Idaho and Nevada. This massive effort is the largest number of instruments deployed in an on-land controlled- source seismic experiment. This army of helpers includes 42 students from 12 different universities, mainly the University of Oklahoma, Oregon State, Arizona State, MIT, Stanford, Miami-Ohio, University of Texas at Dallas, and Rhode Island, ably assisted by 6 staff members from the PASSCAL/EarthScope Instrument Center. This deployment takes advantage of 100 broadband seismometers in the existing HLP array placed during the past three years by Carnegie Institution and Arizona State University. The University of Oregon, Michigan Tech, and the U. S. Geological Survey also deployed an array in the Newberry volcano area to record earthquakes and the seismic source. Together, these efforts will provide a deep and three- dimensional image of the structure of this region. New instrumentation built by PASSCAL allowed us to carry out 3C recording using the Texan facility to study crustal anisotropy. The seismometers were located to provide high-resolution images of the mantle and crust directly beneath the path of volcanism that dotted the High Lava Plains during the past 16 Ma. In addition to the seismic component, the overarching project, funded by the National Science Foundation's Continental Dynamics program, includes field geologists, petrologists, and geodynamicists interested in resolving the origin of the sudden massive outpouring of basalt volcanism 16 million years ago and a puzzling trend of age-progressive rhyolite domes that reaches west toward Newberry volcano, the youngest complex in the trend.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2008
- Bibcode:
- 2008AGUFM.S11C1765C
- Keywords:
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- 7294 Seismic instruments and networks (0935;
- 3025);
- 8137 Hotspots;
- large igneous provinces;
- and flood basalt volcanism