Recent News

PASSCAL's Polar Group supported AGAP deployments in one of the most extreme polar environments on the planet.

Results are now emerging from the AGAP Project, funded by the National Science Foundation through its Office of Polar Programs. AGAP, which stands for Antarctica's Gamburtsev Province, has been probing the Gamburtsev mountain range for years. These mountains, completely covered by Antarctic ice, were not even discovered until 1958. New data now coming out are showing that these mountains have a youthful topography much like that of the Alps in Europe, and have not been weathered significantly.  Furthermore, the history of the root of the range can now be tracked back to one billion years in the past, with major rejuvenation events in the Permian and Cretaceous periods (~250 and 100 million years ago respectively). One reason the Gamburtsev range is important is that it is believed to be the initial site of Antarctic ice-sheet growth during major climatic changes some 35 million years ago.

Researchers Andy Nyblade of Penn State and Douglas Wiens and Patrick Shore of Washington University in St. Louis are part of the seismic portion of the project, called GamSeis. The IRIS/PASSCAL Instrument Center provided an array of broadband seismic stations used for the project by Wiens and Shore, along with Penn State's Nyblade, and Masaki Kanao of the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR).

When the earth shook near Richmond, Virginia on August 23, 2011 at 1:51 PM EDT (17:51:04 UTC), millions of inhabitants of the eastern seaboard were surprised by the magnitude 5.8 tremor. The seismic community has responded in force, rapidly deploying dozens of new stations to record aftershocks of this rare event. (The largest previous earthquake in Virginia's history was a magnitude 5.9 event in 1897.)

PASSCAL has purchased its first fully automated seismic source, a Propelled Energy Generator, model: PEG-40Kg manufactured by R.T. Clark Companies, Inc. The system is light weight, and highly portable, and is designed to easily mount onto a truck or SUV hitch. Seismic energy is produced when  a large hammer mass weight is propelled by an elastomer band (i.e. a very large rubber band) onto an impact plate, producing an impact frequency range of 10-250Hz. The source is controlled with a hand held motor controller,  and can operate in single cycle or continuous cycle mode. The device is powered by a 12V large capacity battery (car battery).  The PEG-40Kg was received, assembled, and field-tested by  PASSCAL staff on June 23rd-28th, 2011.

Here are pictures of the initial deployment of the new apparatus at the IRIS/PASSCAL Instrument Center.  Click on any image to see a larger version.