Arizona geologists are conducting “x-rays” in the Andes

Written by Daniel Stolt, University of Communications

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The Andes mountain range in Argentina shows the snow-capped summit of Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Americas, and it rises 22,837 feet above sea level. Peter DeCels

Led by geologists at the University of Arizona, an international research team will use data from earthquakes, geology and geochemistry to study how mountain ranges are built in greater detail than ever before.

Supported by a $ 3 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the project will shed light on how the Andes formed in South America, and produce a 3D model of mountain building based on the Andes as a natural laboratory.

The project, which is part of the NSF Frontier Research in Earth Science Program, is called TANGO, which stands for Trans Andean Great Orogeny. At the heart of the project is one of the most networked seismic sensors, or seismometers, ever installed in the Andean region of South America. Scientists will use seismic waves traveling through the Earth’s interior from earthquakes around the world to better understand the geological processes underlying the formation of mountain ranges.

TANGO will focus specifically on the Andes from north to south of Chile and in Argentina.

“TANGO is an excellent example of the type of international cooperation that characterizes the University of Arizona’s unique ability to meet the great challenges of our time,” said Robert C. Robins, President of the University of Arizona. “Building on our strengths and our ongoing research in Earth Sciences, our faculty has laid the foundation that has allowed them to successfully assemble an international team to help us gain a better understanding of a natural process where there is still a lot to learn.”

Susan Beck, Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Arizona, will work as a Principal Investigator at TANGO, with co-principal investigators Barbara Carpa, Peter DeSelis, Mihay Duchia, and Eric Kaiser of the Arizona Department of Earth Sciences

A large part of the TANGO project focuses on seismic imaging, which works a lot like medical imaging like CT scans, which use X-ray images to make tissues visible based on their density. Just like bones and soft tissues that appear as different features, geological features below the surface of the Earth are clearly visible when geologists “x-ray” them by recording shock waves from earthquakes as they travel through the Andes.

“Instead of sending x-rays through your head, we use seismic waves,” Beck said. “We spread our devices across a large area, and wait for earthquakes. We might take data for a year, and then collect a cross-section of what’s out there.”

While many of the processes involved in mountain building – known as mountain formation – are known to occur at the surface, other processes take place deep in the ground, hidden from view. Beck said that seismic imaging allows researchers to probe the Earth’s interior up to 700 miles.

“Combined with the geological and geochemical data from the rocks, we can understand how the Andes were formed over the past 90 million years,” she said.

Along the western edge of South America, a piece of ocean floor known as the Nazca Plate is pushing against its neighbor – the plate containing the South American continent – at a rate of just over two inches per year. This process, known as subduction, causes the Earth’s crust to fold, causing mountain peaks to rise as high as 20,000 feet.

“Subduction affects nearly every aspect of our life,” Beck said. “Think of it as a recycling program for the Earth’s crust; it affects where mountains will rise, where minerals and ores are formed, where tension is released like earthquakes and where the largest volcanic eruptions occur.”

Breaking up together a “giant puzzle”

Geologists still have a vague idea of ​​the details of mountain building operations, Beck said, and Tango is willing to fill in some of the gaps.

“For example, we know that when one plate passes under the other, it causes earthquakes, dragging layers of rocks down with it and causing volcanic eruptions,” she said. “But what happens to that molten rock before it reaches the surface? How deep is the Nazca Plate before it is absorbed into the mantle?”

Beck said the Andes functioned as a gigantic natural laboratory to study the complex process involved in building a mountain range.

“When you make mountains, the rocks erode,” Beck said. “All those eroded rocks have to go somewhere.” “In a mountain range as large as the Andes, these eroding materials accumulate.”

Beck said that as debris from eroded mountains piles up in basins on the eastern side of the Andes, he creates a multi-layered archive of time that is “surprisingly uncovered,” but also offers geologists a head-scratching.

The eastern face of Aconcagua clearly shows the layers of lava and volcanic sediments that make up the mountain. The Great Glacier on the northeastern face is known as Polish Glacier. Peter DeCels

“We have a good understanding of the big picture, but we don’t understand its dynamics in detail,” Beck said. “For example, we found deposits from those raised basins in the mountains, and we don’t really know how they ended up there, so it’s like a giant jigsaw puzzle.”

Beck said she is excited about the seismic component of TANGO.

“Every seismic wave has a travel time that we can measure,” she said. “The time it takes for a seismic wave to travel from the epicenter to our station depends on the material traveling through it at different speeds, and we can detect that. For example, a seismic wave that passes through a magma body slows down compared to a wave that does not, and we will see this difference.”

To record thousands of earthquakes in South America and around the world, the team will install seismic stations across an area roughly 800 miles by 400 miles. Dissemination of technology in this field will involve many students from UArizona and its partner institutions.

“Some stations are easy, because they are in easy-to-reach locations and we just need to dig a hole and insert the sensors,” Beck said, but others are at very remote locations, at high altitudes. Some seismic stations require building a basement, installing solar panels and batteries so that the seismic station can be operated for years. “

Beck said TANGO differs from similar efforts in scope and size.

“In a typical scenario, people would stop these stations for a month, pull them out and call them good, but we would go to very remote areas, and we would have to deploy our devices over several months to years. We are looking at this as our only opportunity to get data that can help us answer On these basic questions. It would be a huge field effort. “

Since mechanisms of origin formation are not unique to the Andes, TANGO will help scientists better understand tectonic processes in other regions as well. Beck said that the Andes are a modern analogue of what the western margin of North America looked like between 70 and 90 million years ago.

“Similar processes have occurred over geological time in many places around the world,” she said.

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