Pre-IRIS Workshop on USArray-MT Footprint Selection
Skamania Lodge, Washington, June 3rd, 2008
This announcements solicits applications for a one-day, limited attendance workshop on June 3 immediately preceding the regular IRIS workshop at Skamania Lodge, Stevenson, Washington, to prioritize locations of Earthscope-magnetotelluric (MT) station footprints over the United States. This workshop is sponsored by the U.S. NSF/Earthscope program.
EarthScope is installing transportable magnetotelluric (MT) stations to image the electrical conductivity of the deep crust and upper mantle of the U.S. This is providing insight to thermal state, fluid regime (including melts) and geodynamic processes which is complementary to that from the passive seismic recordings of USArray. The MT stations are being laid out in footprints of ~100 sites each over select areas of the U.S. Footprint locations are prioritized by their potential to typify and illuminate important tectonic processes shaping the country and the globe. Approximately six footprints are envisioned for the nation over the lifetime of Earthscope.
The first MT footprint acquisition was completed in the summer of 2007 over the Cascadia subduction system of Oregon and Washington (Figure 1). Results with preliminary tomographic resistivity inversion model were presented at the previous Fall AGU. The second footprint is slated to move westward to sample the northern Precambrian continental edge, the early Cenozoic Idaho batholith, and the late Cenozoic Snake River Plain, northernmost Basin and Range, and Yellowstone hotspot. These two footprints were selected following input by the EMSOC national community of researchers into solid-earth electrical conductivity, and in consideration of other initiatives such as Geoswath.
Advice from the broader U.S. earth science community is sought for further MT footprint selection to maximize scientific payoff through integrative interpretation of MT resistivity structure with other geophysical and geological data. To this end, the IRIS electromagnetic working group (EMWoG) is holding a one-day workshop at Skamania Lodge immediately prior to the regular IRIS workshop of June 4-6. EMWoG is soliciting of order 10 active researchers from non-MT fields to participate with a similar number of MT researchers in the one-day workshop to guarantee the best possible outcome to the Earthscope investment in the MT campaign. Non-MT fields may include, though not necessarily be limited to, active and passive seismic methods, potential fields, geodesy, geodynamic modeling, geochronology, structural geology, and igneous and metamorphic petrology.
EMWoG is offering to pay the airfare, plus the extra day accommodation expenses, of the researchers joining this pre-IRIS MT workshop. Thus the offer represents a savings in travel cost for researchers who already plan to attend the regular IRIS meeting; it is made as an inducement to achieve robust community participation. Selection of attendees will be made primarily on a first-come, first-chosen basis, but also with the goal of ensuring diversity in attendee specialties. Additional researchers may be able to attend if self-supported, although final numbers will be determined in order to preserve focus of this short workshop.
Please give careful consideration to the possibility of participating in this pre-IRIS meeting. Interested researchers should contact meeting organizer Phil Wannamaker through the address below.
Phil Wannamaker
University of Utah/EGI
423 Wakara Way, Suite 300
Salt Lake City, UT 84108
U.S.A.
Ph. 801-581-3548
Fx. 801-585-3540
pewanna@egi.utah.edu
Figure 1: EarthScope Transportable MT deployments: 30 sites in 2006 (purple), ~80 sites in 2007 (yellow). The shaded area is a region that has been proposed to image the northern Basin and Range, Snake River Plain, and Yellowstone Hot Spot in 2008.