Fischer leads team probing Central America's volcanoes

This past summer, Karen Fischer, professor of geological sciences, co-lead a major seismic experiment in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.

For the experiment, Fischer installed 48 seismometers across the volcanoes of the countries. The work was funded by the MARGINS program of the National Science Foundation. MARGINS goal is to understand the complex interplay of processes that govern the evolution of continental margins.

Fischer's collaborators were Geoff Abers '83, now a professor at Boston University; Marino Protti and Victor Gonzalez of Universidad Nacional, Costa Rica; Wilfried Strauch of INETER, Nicaragua; and a team of students that included Brown fourth-year graduate student Catherine Rychert; Brown third-year student Alexis Walker; Ellen Syracuse '03, currently a graduate student at Boston University; and Boston University graduate student Laura Auguer.

From Nicaragua to Costa Rica, magmas produced by the region's volcanoes show a large and systematic change in geochemistry, suggesting strong variations in the depth and extent of melting and the role of water fluxed from the subducting lithospheric slab. The goal of the experiment led by Fischer is to image the crust and mantle to better understand melting processes beneath this region and in subduction zones worldwide.