September 2026

I completed fieldwork in northern Chile near Iquique with researcher Bertran Potin and Ph.D. student Bastian Valdes, in collaboration with Brad Lipovsky, Juan Baez, and host professor Sergio Ruiz. During the deployment, we installed a DAS array in Puerto Patache and two temporary seismic stations to support high-resolution observations of shallow seismicity in a subduction-zone setting.

Fieldwork

This deployment is part of my work on tectonic earthquakes and distributed fiber-optic sensing. The new observations will help build earthquake catalogs, map active faults, and study earthquake processes using dense seismic measurements from DAS alongside conventional seismic stations.

Temporary seismic station installed during northern Chile fieldwork
Temporary seismic station deployment in northern Chile.
DAS installation work in northern Chile
DAS installation and instrumentation work in Puerto Patache.
Fieldwork planning and coordination during the northern Chile deployment
Fieldwork planning and deployment coordination.

First Observations

The Patache DAS array recorded an Mw 4.6 earthquake on 13 September 2026. The figure below shows the seismic wavefield along 30 km of fiber-optic cable, together with the P- and S-wave picks.

Patache DAS record of an Mw 4.6 earthquake with P- and S-wave picks along the fiber-optic cable
DAS record of the 13 September 2026 Mw 4.6 Patache earthquake, showing P- and S-wave picks along 30 km of fiber-optic cable.

Takeaways

  • DAS can provide dense spatial observations of shallow seismicity in tectonically active regions.
  • Combining fiber-optic sensing with temporary seismic stations helps connect local earthquake detections with fault structure.
  • Field deployments are an important step between instrument design, data quality, and earthquake-source science.