Imaging of Cocos Plate Beneath Southern Costa Rica From Receiver Function Analysis

A transect of 19 seismological broadband stations crossing the Talamanca Mountain Range in Southern Costa Rica was operated from March 2005 to April 2007 as a part of the Collaborative Research Center SFB 574 "Volatiles and Fluids in Subduction Zones". The aim of the seismological subproject A2 was to gain insight into the structure of the Central American subduction zone and possible pathways for fluid migration. Previous studies of active seismics and local seismicity suggested to explain the gap of volcanism in the Talamanca range with the lack of a subducting slab. They assumed that the Cocos Ridge underlies the overriding plate at a shallow dip. In contrast, our receiver function analysis of 322 teleseimic earthquakes is able to image the subducting Cocos Plate down to depths of at least 100 km. The dip angle of the slab closer to the trench is outside the network but appears to be shallow, consistent with former studies. Below 40 km, the dip increases to more than 45 deg. This is supported by accurately located seismicity from a tomography study also performed by our group. Crustal structure could also be resolved by the receiver function analysis in agreement with tomography and active seismic investigations. The existence of the subducting slab poses the question why volcanism stopped 4 Ma ago; several possible scenarios are discussed.