Adriana Ocampo has led six research expeditions to study what geological formation that is more than 180 km in diameter and 20 km in depth
Adriana Ocampo Adriana Ocampo is a Colombian planetary geologist and the Science Program Manager at NASA Headquarters. Her research contributed to the understanding of the Chicxulub impact crater. She has led six research expeditions to the Chicxulub impact site. Ocampo and her colleagues also discovered the Aorounga Crater Chain in Chad in 1996.
Large low-shear-velocity provinces Large low-shear-velocity provinces, LLSVPs, also called superplumes, are characteristic structures of parts of the lowermost mantle (the region surrounding the outer core) of the Earth. These provinces are characterized by slow shear wave velocities and were discovered by seismic tomography of the deep Earth. There are two main provinces: the African LLSVP and the Pacific LLSVP. Both extend laterally for thousands of kilometers and possibly up to 1000 km vertically from the core-mantle boundary. The Pacific LLSVP has specific dimensions of 3000 km across and 300 m higher than the surrounding ocean-floor, and is situated over four hotspots that suggest multiple mantle plumes underneath. These zones represent around 3% of the volume of the Earth. Other names for LLSVPs include "superwells", "thermo-chemical piles", or "hidden reservoirs". Some of these names, however, are more interpretive of their geodynamical or geochemical effects, while many questions remain about their nature.