HR: 09:20h
AN: S11A-05    [PDF]
TI: 29 years of surprises from hotspots: A personal perspective
AU: Students of EAO, .
AF: Northwestern Univ., Locy Hall, Evanston, IL 60208 United States
AU: * Okal, E A
EM: emile@earth.nwu.edu
AF: Northwestern Univ., Locy Hall, Evanston, IL 60208 United States
AB: I arrived at Caltech on 26 August 1974, to begin my graduate studies at the Seismo Lab, then under the Directorship of Don L. Anderson. These were the days, among other topics, of Don's famous multilingual footnote on the "definition..., antecedents..., supporters and detractors" of the concept of "plume" [GSA Bull., 86, p. 1593, 1975], and even though I was not to set foot on a hotspot island until my first trip to Tahiti in December 1977 (those stopovers at Keflavik on the 199-dollar Loftleidir runs did not really count), I quickly acquired a mild form of Don's contagious fascination for the activity and structure of hotspots. As a tribute to Don, I have chosen to recap here a few surprising results obtained, with the help of my students, past and present, over several decades of work on the seismological sources and structures in the neighborhood of hotspot islands.
DE: 7207 Core and mantle
DE: 8124 Earth's interior--composition and state (old 8105)
SC: Seismology [S]
MN: 2003 Fall Meeting