First data from the Mojave Broadband Seismic Experiment, southern California

The first round of data has now been collected from our Mojave Broadband Seismic Experiment, funded by the Southern California Earthquake Center and the Jackson School of Geosciences, in collaboration with colleagues Thorsten Becker and Rob Porritt (U. Texas Austin), and Vera Schulte-Pelkam (U. Colorado Boulder).  Our primary goals with this project are to understand 1) the localisation of strain in the lithosphere beneath primary strike-slip faults of the Eastern California Shear Zone (part of the San Andreas Fault System) and 2) how the Mojave lower crust and lithospheric mantle were modified during Cretaceous to Oligocene flat-slab subduction during the Laramide orogeny.

After deploying the 19 seismometers in April, 2018, Rob Porritt and several UT students returned to the field earlier this month to see how the data turned out.  Aside from a few chewed cables and some patchy GPS recording, the first data collection was a great success!  Check out Rob’s blog for more details!