Archived News

The next Seismic Instrumentation Technology Symposium (ITS2013) will be held in Albuquerque, NM on June 10th and 11th, 2013, at the Sheraton Albuquerque Airport Hotel.

The IRIS website has a page for the conference, with the agenda, participants, and registration form.

The theme of this symposium is to examine future technology, both from the perspective of capabilities scientists and engineers are seeking and the technologies that are, or will be, in the product pipeline of the seismic technology industry. The symposium will provide a forum for perspectives from both technology users and vendors and allow generous time for discussion and interaction.

It's been an eventful media week for several of the staff of IRIS PASSCAL, who were highlighted in a lengthy piece on women in science in the New Mexico Rural Electric Cooperative Association's magazine, enchantment, which is the second largest publication in New Mexico. Then, when a small earthquake rocked Socorro, more PASSCAL staff were prominently featured in a report on the quake in the local newspaper of record, El Defensor Chieftain.

On Friday, February 22nd, New Mexico's newest member of the United States Senate, Martin Heinrich, paid a visit to New Mexico Tech, and the IRIS/PASSCAL Instrument Center. Senator Heinrich, who won his seat in the 2012 general election, is a strong advocate for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Education, and is the only engineer currently serving in the senate.

Senator Heinrich was given an overview of activities at the school by New Mexico Tech President Dr. Dan Lopez, and also toured the Mechanical Engineering Department.  Dr. Rick Aster escorted Sen. Heinrich on a tour of the PASSCAL Instrument Center, the world’s largest and the nation’s flagship federally-funded lending library of seismology equipment.

When and how do rivers transport sediment from eroding landscapes? New research by Brandon Schmandt and Karl Karlstrom of the University of New Mexico and Rick Aster of New Mexico Tech is shedding light on how seismology can address this fundamental problem. The PASSCAL Instrument Center provided several quick-deploy stations from its RAMP (Rapid Array Mobilization Program) pool in support of this innovative project. The panoramic view of the Grand Canyon above was taken during a December 2012 data recovery trip.

In addition to loaning and maintaining devices from the instrument pool, and providing vital assistance to PIs in the field, PASSCAL also trains PIs and their colleagues at our facility in Socorro, New Mexico.  These training sessions can be intense, and typically last three days. The instruction is focused on the specific technical areas requested by PIs (such as data archival methods, or mastering the intricacies of specific sensors).

Training is important for both novice and well-seasoned PIs.  It provides hands-on interaction with the many types of instrumentation, software, and data handling that PASSCAL supplies, as well as the opportunity to ask questions that normally wouldn't come up until the PI is deploying equipment in the field.  Training at PASSCAL provides PIs with the opportunity to have their questions answered immediately by our on-site knowledgeable staff.

The seismic and geodetic Polar communities have worked with IRIS and UNAVCO to provide a plan for the growth, development, management and governance of Polar support services for the NSF facilities. This plan is now complete and posted on the IRIS webpage.

Here is the executive summary from the report:

On October 8-13, 2012, a three-man team from the EarthScope Transportable Array and IRIS/PASSCAL installed a prototype "cold and dark" seismic station at Eagle Plains, Yukon Territory, Canada, just 30km south of the Arctic Circle.  The station installation developed new methodologies for drilling a shallow, 55" deep borehole in exposed bedrock. Protection for electronics, power, and communication subsystems (from the elements, and from large wildlife) was provided by an all-weather hut bolted to bedrock.

December 2, 2012
San Francisco-Palomar Hotel

An IRIS PASSCAL data-archiving workshop will be offered prior to the 2012 Fall AGU meeting in San Francisco. This workshop will serve as an opportunity to help PIs and archivers familiarize themselves with the data group, the support provided by the data group, and the software utilized in the archival process.

IRIS/PASSCAL summer intern Alan Shi has some interesting stories to tell about his last few months with the PASSCAL Instrument Center in Socorro, NM.  The season began calmly enough, and Alan enjoyed developing a testing enclosure to verify that field equipment boxes such as the MEVO (Mt. Erebus Volcanic Observatory) boxes were distributing power properly, as well as performing ruggedness-testing of memory sticks before their use to collect data in arctic regions. But, the most impressive part of Alan's summer by far was his deployment to the rapidly-changing ice sheets of Greenland.  Here are some recollections and photographs of intern Shi's experiences on the ice.

IRIS/PASSCAL has been a key supporter of a novel deployment of equipment at Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska.  A team of researchers from the University of Alaska Southeast, the University of California Santa Cruz, and the Alaska Science Center in Anchorage have been performing an ambitious analysis as part of a low-budget cutting-edge project. Above, a Trillium Compact AT is lowered directly into a borehole in the glacier.