GEOPHYSICAL NETWORKS IN PANAMA
Eduardo Camacho Astigarrabía1
1
Instituto de Geociencias, Universidad de Panama
Panama is located on the Panama microplate, with the Caribbean plate subducting to the
north, the Nazca plate subducting obliquely to the south, the Cocos plate subducting to the
southwest and finally converging with the South American plate to the east. The Panama
Fracture Zone which is the boundary between the Cocos and Nazca plates subducts below
southwestern Panama. There are also some important intraplate fault zones as the SonaAzuero fault zone and the Pedro Miguel-Limon fault zone. All this active boundaries and
fault zones have generated earthquakes greater than 7.0 in historical times and before.
Panama has a long record of geophysical monitoring. The French installed the first seismic
instrument in the Western Hemisphere in early 1882. This instrument recorded the
September 7, 1882 (Mw>7.9) earthquake, offshore the northeast Caribbean coast of the
Isthmus. The tsunami caused by this event with a maximum run up of 3.0 m., was also
recorded by a French mareographic station near Colon at Limon Bay.
The Panama Canal Company replaced in 1909 the old French instruments by two sets of
100 kg and 25 kg, Bosch Omori seismographs at Balboa Heights Panama (BHP). In 1932
these instruments were replaced by two Wood Anderson seismographs. The first
accelerograph in Latin America was installed at BHP in early 1934 and it recorded the July
18, 1934 Puerto Armuelles Earthquake (M7.7) in Western Panama. The Wood-Andersons
were replaced in 1962 and BHP became a WWSSN station until 1977.
At present Panama have the following geophysical networks
Seismic Networks: the University of Panama Instituto de Geociencias (IGC) has 8 broad
band stations and more than 40 short period instruments deployed all over the country with
real time transmission. It also shares all real time signals with the Panama Canal Authority
(ACP) network, which has deployed short period instruments around the Panama Canal,
and OSOP, which operates a broad band station in western Panama.
Accelerographic Networks: ACP has instrumented all their dams and locks with real time
transmission. IGC has a free field network of 8 stations with real time transmission and 7
stations with no real time transmission. All data is shared between these two
accelerographic networks and some of the hydroelectric dams private operators. Panama
Technical University (UTP) runs an urban strong motion network mainly deployed in
Panama City, which consists of 128 stations with no real time transmission.
GPS Networks: There are four main GPS networks. They are operated by the ACP,
Instituto Geografico Nacional (IGN), Coconet and Penn State University/IGC. The PSUIGC network exchange data with the IGN, ACP and Coconet networks.