After 7 days of intense fieldwork we finished the geophysical survey in the claypan PAG south of the Río Loa. Together with colleagues from the Institute of Geophysics and Meteorology of the UoC (Pritam Yogeshwar, Barbara Blanco, Wiebke Mörbe) and the TUBAF Freiberg (Stefan Buske, Peggy Gödickmeier, Christoph Büttner, Lukas Ninnemann), Julia Diederich and Volker Wennrich from project A02 conducted a detailed seismic and TEM (Transient electromagnetics) investigation of the claypan already cored in fall 2017 to reconstruct the thickness and 3D sediment geometry of the sediment infill. First primary TEM results indicate two clearly distinguishable sediment layers above the bedrock at a depth of 40 – 90  m, what is much deeper than expected before.

During the seismic survey the highly sensitive geophones recorded several smaller earthquakes, and a bigger with a magnitude of 6.2 even shaked our camp.

We’re now refilling food and water to continue to the next claypan in Huara (ca. 40 km from Iquique).