So there's only 2 more days?! Holy Cow!!! The thought of living in Boulder on my own again, spending time with the interns, and diving into another project still seems unreal.. It feels like it was just yesterday when I parted with Val and the interns and ever since then, I've been missing them and Boulder a heck of a lot. It's not often I meet people who are as driven as these guys and who are so passionate to learn about science.. including everything from observing how the plasma sphere density changes during an unusual solar cycle to figuring out how soil moisture content is affected in a burned area. These guys really had an impact on me last summer and I aspire to be like them, of whom, each are outgoing, motivated to understand some phenomenon in science, and are driven to do what it takes to perform their best giving a talk, writing a scientific paper, and making a poster. This summer, I want to step up in public speaking and through my writing assignments, help out the new interns any way I can, and take away as much as I can from my project.
This summer I'm stoked to work at CU with Craig Jones, a professor who specializes in geophysical techniques to detect phases, such as a Pn phase (refraction off of the upper mantle). He's written papers about crustal thicknesses and mantle fabrics beneath the Sierra Nevada Mountains, which is important for helping scientists understand the tectonic history of the area and how the Sierras came to form. So far, I know I’ll be working on a simple analysis to determine the Pn phase and from there, go on to model seismic anisotropy and velocities in the upper lithospheric mantle. Right now I’m trying to understand the constraints on the Pn phase and how mantle fabrics relate to the formation of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. I know I’ve got a lot of reading to catch up on to grasp my project’s methods, implications, etc… I’ll be sure to keep you updated as I find out more from Craig. I’m hoping this project will provide me with a foundation in utilizing geophysical techniques to observe phases in the mantle, that way I can move on to more advanced techniques next semester and possibly in grad school.
One last thing I wanted to share with you is the research I was working on this spring and hope to expand on in the fall. I gained a lot of insight about mantle fabrics beneath Menengai caldera. It’s given me a greater appreciation for geophysical techniques because I now understand how vital they are for geothermal exploration, which in turn means more water for people in Kenya and in surrounding communities.
I was observing the SKS phase at 13 stations from teleseismic events. All these stations are within Menengai Caldera located in the eastern Kenyan Rift in Africa. What happens at this phase, is a polarized shear wave splits into two waves due to entering an anisotropic medium (asthenosphere). One of these waves is oriented with the long axis of the olivine crystals and this tells us which way the mantle is flowing. By observing the delay time between the two waves, were also able to tell the velocity of the mantle. Then from there, I plotted vectors on a graph in the Menengai Caldera vicinity showing the direction and velocity. Most of the vectors are oriented in a north- west position. So in conclusion, the vectors are oriented north –west and knowing this is important to understand the fluid mechanics of the asthenosphere flow, of which magma plumes feed the hydrothermal system in the Menengai Caldera. What’s next on the agenda, is to figure out at what depth the SKS phase is occurring using focal mechanisms. It’s like we know where its happening along the x and y axis, but now were trying to find out where on the z axis.
