The PICTURES sources are also being recorded on 50 seismometers onshore.  Addition of these seismometers to the recording array extends the imaging capability of PICTURES to the east and to greater depth on the plate boundary.  The land seismometers were installed by faculty and graduate students from the University of Liverpool and the Universidad of Chile, who learned of this project 3 days before we left port. Many of the instruments were shipped from England, where they are packed up and ready to go whenever and wherever an earthquake or other exceptional seismological opportunity occurs.  Getting these instruments through customs and into the ground in a remote part of Chile in 2 weeks was a monumental achievement that required the dedicated efforts of many people! These seismometers will stay in place recording local earthquakes until late December, when they will be moved south to record the Langseth source in south-central Chile as part of Langeth’s next expedition – CEVICHE (Crustal Experiment from Valdivia to Illapel to Characterize Huge Earthquakes).

Figure 1. A Liverpool rapid-deployment seismic station.  Not shown, but also indispensable, is a shovel.  The entire station will be buried.  Careful notes are needed to recover the station and data!

Figure 2. The intrepid deployment team on the coast of Chile near Iquique. This team did a remarkable job of installing a large number of stations in a very short time, traveling on any road possible to distribute the stations across the study region.  From left to right: Sergio Leon-Rios, Efrain Rivera, Javier Ojeda and Daniela Calle.