TICO-CAVA Project Overview

The TICO-CAVA (Transects to Investigate the Composition and Origin of the Central American Volcanic Arc) project is a seismic reflection/refraction study funded by the NSF-MARGINS initiative. It is a fundamental part of the Subduction Factory initiative's Central American focus site. This project is a joint venture of the University of Wyoming (W. Steven Holbrook), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Dan Lizarralde), the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (Harm van Avendonk), Columbia University (Peter Kelemen), and the Universidad de Costa Rica, Escuela Centroamericana de Geologia (Percy Denyer, Carlos Ramirez, Carlos Alonso Vargas, Guillermo Alvarado and Mauricio Mora).
The project has these principal aims:

Constrain the composition and flux of the primary magma that formed the Costa Rican volcanic arc.

Investigate the lateral heterogeneity in crustal structure along the arc.

Test and constrain recent results indicating that lithospheric faults produce serpentinized upper mantle in the Cocos plate that, in turn, influences the "slab signature" of the Central American arc lavas

Assess the degree to which low upper-mantle velocities are due to anisotropy rather than serpentinization

Determine the crustal structure of the provinces that comprise the upper plate of the arc in Costa Rica and Nicaragua with transects in the Caribbean back-arc

Our field work took place in two field seasons: an onshore explosion seismic refraction study in 2005, and a (currently ongoing) principally marine campaign in 2008. The marine surveys are taking place in two cruises on the R/V Marcus G. Langseth and one cruise of R/V New Horizon. During the marine shooting, the airgun shots of the Langseth are being recorded by three types of receivers: an 8-km-long hydrophone streamer for reflection data, ocean-bottom seismometers deployed by the Scripps and WHOI teams (blue circles in the map below), and two arrays of onshore portable seismometers ("Refteks"). Here's the map:

Back up to MGL0804