USAP-DC

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The high elevations of East Antarctica are critical in localizing the initial Cenozoic glaciation and stabilizing it with respect to melting during warm interglacials. However, the geological history for this region and the geophysical mechanism for maintaining the highlands are poorly understood. In 2007-2009, an array of 24 broadband seismographs (named GAMSEIS) was installed across the Gamburtsev Mountains area of the East Antarctic Plateau as part of the Antarctica?s Gamburtsev Province (AGAP) International Polar Year project. The IPY AGAP/GAMSEIS program included plans by other international partners to install seismographs at locations along the flanks of the Gamburtsev Mountains and in other East Antarctic regions. The proposed project will continue operating six of the deployed AGAP/GAMSEIS stations for two more years together with two new broadband seismic stations added to broaden the geographic scope of the array. Most stations will be located at the existing U.S. Autonomous Geophysical Observatories and the USAP fuel cache locations in order to minimize logistical support. This array, combined with seismographs deployed by China and Japan (and possibly Australia, France, and Italy in near future) will provide a sparse but large-scale network of seismometers for the longer-term studies of the crustal and upper mantle structures underneath the East Antarctic Plateau. Continued reliance on students provides a broader impact to this proposed research and firmly grounds this effort in its educational mission.

Person	Role
Wiens, Douglas	Investigator
Nyblade, Andrew	Investigator

Antarctic Earth Sciences	Award # 0838973
Antarctic Earth Sciences	Award # 0838934

NSF-ANT08-38934
NSF-ANT08-38973

None in the Database

Repository	Title (link)	Format(s)	Status
IRIS	Seismological Record ID# ZM 2007-12	None	exist
IRIS	Seismological Record Network Code# ZM (full data link not provided)	None	exist

1. Heeszel, D. S., Wiens, D. A., Anandakrishnan, S., Aster, R. C., Dalziel, I. W. D., Huerta, A. D., … Winberry, J. P. (2016). Upper mantle structure of central and West Antarctica from array analysis of Rayleigh wave phase velocities. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 121(3), 1758–1775. (doi:10.1002/2015jb012616)
2. OʼDonnell, J. P., & Nyblade, A. A. (2014). Antarcticaʼs hypsometry and crustal thickness: Implications for the origin of anomalous topography in East Antarctica. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 388, 143–155. (doi:10.1016/j.epsl.2013.11.051)
3. Heeszel, D. S., Wiens, D. A., Nyblade, A. A., Hansen, S. E., Kanao, M., An, M., & Zhao, Y. (2013). Rayleigh wave constraints on the structure and tectonic history of the Gamburtsev Subglacial Mountains, East Antarctica. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth, 118(5), 2138–2153. (doi:10.1002/jgrb.50171)
4. Ma, X., Sun, X., Wiens, D. A., Wen, L., Nyblade, A., Anandakrishnan, S., … Wilson, T. (2016). Strong seismic scatterers near the core–mantle boundary north of the Pacific Anomaly. Physics of the Earth and Planetary Interiors, 253, 21–30. (doi:10.1016/j.pepi.2016.01.007)
5. Lough, A. C., Barcheck, C. G., Wiens, D. A., Nyblade, A., & Anandakrishnan, S. (2015). A previously unreported type of seismic source in the firn layer of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 120(11), 2237–2252. (doi:10.1002/2015jf003658)