The Cascadia Initiative in an ambitious amphibious seismic array crossing from the North American continent into the Pacific Ocean. Over the course of 4 year NSF sponsored project, 70 ocean floor seismometers will be deployed at more than 150 locations on the Juan de Fuca plate making this the largest ocean floor seismic experiment in US history. At the same time about 30 onshore seismometers have been deployed along the Cascadia margin from California to Washington, complementing the permanent seismic networks in the region operated by UC Berkeley, US Geological Survey and University of Washington.
The science goals are equally impressive including understanding the recently discovered process of episodic seismic tremor and slip that may hold clues to future M9 megathrust earthquakes, and imaging the structure of an entire tectonic plate from its formation at the Juan de Fuca ridge to its destruction beneath the Cascadia seismic and volcanic zone.
