MASE: Undergraduate Research and Outreach as Part of a Large Project

Abstract

The MesoAmerican Subduction Experiment (MASE) is a collaboration between the Tectonics Observatory at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM), and the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing (CENS) at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). Its main objective is to model and understand the dynamics of the subduction of the Cocos plate under the North American plate. In the first stage of the project, 100 broadband seismometers were deployed along a line that crosses Mexico from Acapulco on the Pacific coast to Tempoal, close to the Gulf of Mexico (figure 1) (Perez-Campos, Clayton et al. 2006; Clayton et al. 2007). This line goes through six Mexican states, with the stations distributed among 84 different towns, including seven cities (Acapulco, Chilpancingo, Iguala, Cuernavaca, Mexico City, Pachuca, and Huejutla). Security was an important factor when selecting sites, and schools turned out to be nearly ideal in this respect. In total, 53 MASE stations are situated in schools that range from K–12 through university level, and another six were housed within cultural or educational centers. This situation presented an excellent opportunity to provide educational outreach, particularly to rural communities. Usually, the schools in small towns draw students from neighboring communities, which means that outreach impact is spread beyond the specific MASE sites. Figure 1. Station location and type. The symbol of each station represents the type of site (school/private property). Six states hosted MASE stations, indicated by outlined numbers. Major cities and key towns are indicated by a star. The lower pie chart indicates the percentage of each school level or type of site along the MASE line. Figure 2. MASE social service program (SSP). Upper panel shows outreach activities and lower panel shows those related to research. Dashed lines include activities that favor student's knowledge in seismology. …