Lau Basin Ocean Bottom Seismograph Survey (LABATTS)

LABATTS was a 3-month deployment of 30 Ocean Bottom Seismographs (OBS) in the Lau backarc and Tonga forarc during late 1994. The OBS's were deployed from the R/V Melville during September 1994, and recovered from the R/V Moana Wave in January 1995. The OBS survey took place during the Southwest Pacific Seismic Experiment (SPaSE), a 2 year deployment of 12 broadband seismographs on the islands of the Tonga-Fiji region. The goals of the project are to image the upper mantle structure associated with the subducting Tonga slab and the active Lau backarc spreading center, thereby to determine evidence for phase changes in the slab and sources of back-arc magmas.

Map and Station Locations

IRIS Newsletter Description of SPaSE (project summary)

Initial Research Results

Photo Gallery

Principal Investigators

• Doug Wiens, Washington University
• Leroy Dorman, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
• John Hildebrand, Scripps Institute of Oceanography
• Spahr Webb, Scripps Institute of Oceanography

Links

• Southwest Pacific Seismic Experiment (SPaSE)
• Incorporated Reserach Institutions for Seismology (IRIS)
• ONR OBS Facility, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
• U.S. National Ocean Bottom Seismography Instrument Pool (OBSIP)
• Office of Naval Research (ONR)