Welcome to the TUCAN Web Page
UNDER CONSTRUCTION!
TUCAN is Tomography (and other things) Under Costa rica And Nicaragua
TUCAN is a major deployment of 48 broadband seismographs,
2003-2006, to image the mantle wedge and subducting plate in Central
America. The aim is to better understand the processes that control
melting beneath arc volcanoes, the flow field and water cycle in subduction
zones, and ultimately better understand why arc volcanism occurs.
The
Central American convergent margin is an excellent target for seismic imaging
because the arc exhibits nearly the complete global range in geochemical
indicators of the subducting plate (e.g., 10Be, Ba/La) as well as
some of the largest variations in indicators for degree of mantle
melting. Nearly all of these changes occur between western Nicaragua and
central Costa Rica. For these reasons, the Central America arc has been
chosen as one of two Focus Areas for the US-MARGINS
Subduction Factory Initiative.
The Proposal
(ftp
proposal here in 6Mb PDF) or just the (Project
Summary PDF)
Major Collaborators
Boston University
Brown University
OVSICORI - Universidad National Autonoma
Costa Rica
INETER - Nicaragua
Funding provided by the U.S. National Science Foundation,
MARGINS program
Instruments made available by the IRIS-PASSCAL
Instrument Center
Deployment Information
The initial deployment was completed July-August 2004, and will continue until
March 2006. Some preliminary documents.
Station map -- Updated following the
initial deployment, November 2004.
Station list (text file)
Summary of station SYSTEM
POWERUP messages
Current up-time plot (PDF) showing 96% aggregate up time for data through
March 2005 submitted to IRIS
