SONNE SO244/1

The structure and morphology of the seafloor and shallow subbottom stores crucial information on subseafloor processes, such as permanent deformation by seismic slip or aseismic creep within the overriding plate and earthquake and tsunami generation.
The aim of cruise SO244/1 is to map the seafloor offshore the port of Iquique down to the Northern Chile deep-sea trench by shipbased multibeam echo sounding and with the AUV ABYSS at sufficient resolution to identify active tectonic fault structures and – if present - submarine mass wasting structures, to quantitatively assess young and active deformation of the overriding plate in the area, and to quantify the extent of recent catastrophic downslope mass movements of sediment. The investigations are a site survey for the deployment of the GeoSEA seafloor geodetic array during cruise SO244/2.
The investigations are made timely by the 01 April 2014 Pisagua (M=8.2) earthquake, that ruptured the plate interface north of the area of investigation, which is located in the last remaining locked seimotectonic segment along the Chilean active margin. Bathymetric mapping in the area will provide an important data reference for possible post-earthquake surveys once this seismotectonic segment will have broken in the future.