ALBERT

Description: This study presents paleomagnetic data from 59 independent lava flows from the trans-Mexican volcanic belt (TMVB) with ages from 6.4 Ma to recent, 52 being younger than 1 Ma, and 11 new 40Ar/39Ar age determinations. Most remanence carriers are Ti-poor titanomagnetite of pseudosingle-domain magnetic structure, nine lavas contain small amounts of titanomaghemite, and four lavas additional (titano-) hematite. Paleosecular variation of lava flows younger than 1.7 Ma is consistent with latitude-dependent Model G and also in agreement with other Pleistocene paleomagnetic data from the TMVB. The directional record of Brunhes and Matuyama Chrons lavas was correlated to the geomagnetic polarity timescale and there is evidence for at least four geomagnetic excursions. One lava flow dated at 592 ± 20 ka has a fully reversed paleodirection and most likely erupted during the Big Lost excursion. Another fully reversed flow, dated at 671 ± 12 ka, gives new volcanic evidence for the Delta/Stage 17 excursion. This excursion is supported by a reversed intermediate direction of another flow from a different volcanic field but of very close age of 673 ± 10 ka. From the Matuyama age lavas, one flow with normal polarity magnetization, dated at 949 ± 37 ka, could either be related to the Kamikatsura or the Santa Rosa excursion and a normal polarity flow, dated at 1628 ± 56 ka, could have been emplaced during the Gilsa excursion. The results presented here confirm in one case but disagree in four cases with results presented in two previous studies of the same lava flows and interpreted as geomagnetic excursions.

Description: The oceanic Nazca plate subducts beneath the continental South American plate by recurrent rupture of large segments of its interface. The resulting earthquakes are among the largest and most frequent on Earth. Along the Chilean and southern Peruvian margin, all sizeable segments have ruptured at least once in the past 150 years for which there exist historic and/or instrumental records. The one segment that is most mature for re-rupture stretches for more than 500 km along the northernmost Chilean coast between roughly -23° and -18° latitude. It last broke in 1877 in a magnitude _8.5 earthquake, triggering a major Tsunami. From the historical record, it has been known to have a recurrence cycle of approximately 110 years. The adjoining segments to the south and north broke rather recently in 1995 and 2001 in M〉8 earthquakes and an M 7.7 earthquake intruded into the southern part of the seismic gap in 2007 between Antofagasto and Tocopilla. This makes northern Chile a unique natural laboratory to observe a subduction megathrust at various stages of its seismic cycle. For that purpose, installation of long-term observatories started in 2006 in a close cooperation of the Universidad de Chile (Santiago, Chile), the Universidad Catolica del Norte (Antofagasta, Chile), the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (France), and the GFZ German research Centre for Geosciences (Germany). Currently we are operating 17 modern seismological stations equipped with STS-2 broadband seismometers and accelerometers (EPI sensor). At least two more stations will be installed in the near future. Continuous GPS, tilt, creep, climate and magnetotellurics measurements are complementing the seismological part. A majority of the sites provide data near real-time. We will present results of seismic monitoring including analysis of the 2007 M7.7 Tocopilla earthquake sequence that was recorded during the installation stage of the observatory. We relocated the mainshock and about a one thousand aftershocks during the following week using waveform cross-correlation and the double-difference algorithm. Aftershocks reveal that rupture during this earthquake was confined to the deeper part (35 - 55 km depth) of the seismogenic coupling zone, except near the Mejillones peninsula that marks rupture termination in the south. Here earthquake activity reaches to depths of 20 km and even shallower, possibly indicating upper plate activation. The sequence also features an M 6.8 earthquake that broke the oceanic slab on an almost vertical plane at the down-dip end of the megathrust rupture. Confrontation with the aftershock distribution of the 1995 M 8.0 Antofagasta earthquake on the adjoining southern segment reveals an intriguing mirror symmetry with an axis crossing the Mejillones peninsula, emphasizing the penisula’s significance as a segment boundary. Since then activity inside the remaining seismic gap to the north picked up with three earthquakes exceeding magnitude 6, maybe heralding the next great rupture.

Description: Fast convergence between the oceanic Nazca and the continental South American plate is accommodated by recurrent rupture of large segments of the two plates’ interface. The resulting earthquakes are among the largest and, for their sizes, most frequent on Earth. Along the Chilean and southern Peruvian margin, all segments have ruptured at least once in the past 150 years for which there exist historic and/or instrumental records. The one segment that is most mature for re-rupture stretches for more than 500 km along the northernmost Chilean coast between roughly -23° and -18° latitude. It last broke in 1877 in a magnitude ~8.8 earthquake, triggering a major Tsunami. From the historical record, it has been known to have a recurrence cycle of approximately 110 years. The adjoining segments to the north and south broke rather recently in 1995 and 2001 in M〉8 earthquakes and an M 7.7 earthquake encroached the southern part of the gap in 2007. The IPOC project intends to investigate this segment of the Nazca-South American plate boundary, on which a strong to devastating earthquake is expected to occur within the next years, by monitoring at a variety of time-scales deformation, seismicity, and magnetotelluric fields in the subduction zone at the closing stages of the interseismic cycle before and possibly during occurrence of a big earthquake. For that purpose, installation of long-term observatories in Northern Chile started in 2006 in a close cooperation of the Universidad de Chile (Santiago, Chile), the Universidad Catolica del Norte (Antofagasta, Chile), the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris (Paris, France), and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ, Potsdam, Germany). Currently we are operating 14 modern seismological stations equipped with STS-2 broadband seismometers and accelerometers (EPI sensor). At least two more stations will be installed in the near future. To cope with the high resolution and dynamic of the sensors and data acquisition, site installation was accomplished with special care. At each station a cavern was blasted into the bedrock up to 5 meters deep to ensure stable conditions for measurements. Currently five stations are additionally recording continuously GPS signals, another five are also recording meteorological data, and another seven are equipped with Magneto-Telluric (MT) probes (fluxgate magnetometers and electrode lines). It is planned to extend the multi-parameter observation to as many stations as possible. So far ten of the stations are sending continuous data via satellite links (VSAT) to the GEOFON data host at the GFZ. We will be reporting first results on seismicity, transient deformation and MT from the first two years of recording.