New Permanent Seismic Network at the Galapagos Islands
Abstract
Due to the scarcity of local stations, seismicity at the Galapagos Islands is under-represented. Using the ISC catalogue, we found a magnitude of homogeneity of 4.5 mb for the 1970-2010 period. The largest magnitude recorded by the global network in this period is 5.6 mb. In 1996 the Instituto Geofisico installed a seismic network composed of six short-period stations with UHF telemetry linkage, located on Fernandina, Isabela, Bartolome and Santa Cruz. Using this network, in 2000, a clear seismic swarm was located at the western edge of the Galapagos platform about 50 km from Cerro Azul and Fernandina volcanoes. This swarm coincides with expected central mantle plume upwelling. A seismic swarm near Alcedo volcano persisted between 2000 and 2001. Between 1999 and 2003 a temporary network was deployed for a hotspot tomography project using teleseismic events (Hooft et al, 2003,Villagomez et al., 2007). Seismic events with epicenters in Alcedo were also reported in the SIGNET project (See Ebinger et al. at this session) consisting of 16 temporal stations. In order to monitor seismic and volcanic activities at the Islands and contribute to research studies on seismic sources and stress states at an active hotspot near a spreading zone, the Instituto Geofisico with the support of an Ecuadorian Science and Technology Secretariat`s grant will install next year a new permanent seismic network of 6 broad-band stations distributed on Alcedo, Sierra Negra, Cerro Azul and Fernandina volcanoes. This network will transmit real-time data to the Instituto Geofisico via satellite connections. This project is also supported by the Galapagos National Park through an institutional agreement.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2010
- Bibcode:
- 2010AGUFM.V41A2269R
- Keywords:
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- 7280 SEISMOLOGY / Volcano seismology;
- 8419 VOLCANOLOGY / Volcano monitoring