Archived News

The 2011 Seismic Instrumentation Technology Symposium was held at Albuquerque Marriott on June 16 - June 17, 2011. This was the second joint Seismology/Earthquake Engineering/DOD symposium on seismic instrumentation technology.  The symposium theme was exploration of emerging instrumentation technologies providing solutions for key technical challenges in observational seismology. Symposium presentations highlighted operator perspectives on these challenges, as well as on emerging technologies in the thematic areas of communications, power, and timing. The symposium focused on creating and facilitating a dialog between academia, industry, and others.

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.

IRIS/PASSCAL summer intern Jennifer Tarnowski is learning the ropes of a seismology career by working at the PASSCAL Instrument Center at New Mexico Tech, and also by participating with hands-on efforts in the field.  Jennifer recently participated in fieldwork supporting the Topographic Effects in Strong Ground Motion project (TESGM, PASSCAL project 201109) in early July, along with principal investigators Brady Cox,  University of Arkansas, Adrian Rodriguez-Marek, Virginia Tech., graduate student Clinton Wood, University of Arkansas, Robert Kent of the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES), and Steve Azevedo, IRIS/PASSCAL.

In early May, a team from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) visited New Mexico Tech to use school facilities to support a new documentary on the current state of knowledge about the Earth's core.  Since seismology is the only practical method for probing the Earth's core, the team arranged the support of two of New Mexico Tech's facilities, the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center (EMRTC), and the Program for Array Seismic Studies of the Continental Lithosphere (PASSCAL), to demonstrate how the seismic waves from earthquakes or man-made explosions can travel through the Earth, and be used as a subsurface probing tool. The team was assisted by Dave Thomas and Mouse Reusch from PASSCAL, and Richard Aster from the NMT Earth and Environmental Science department.

Three engineers from the Escuela Politecnica Nacional Ecuador, Instituto Geofísico, spent the first two weeks of May here at PASSCAL. They are planning a network of 63 permanent broadband stations, 25 emergency sites, and 70 accelerometer stations in Ecuador. These stations will be used to monitor volcanic activity and seismic events. Ecuador is home to more than 20 volcanoes, so this is an important undertaking not only for the scientific knowledge it will provide, but also for the safety of the Ecuadoran people.

Six PASSCAL staff members were in Southern California this March to support the Salton Seismic Imaging Project (SSIP).  The project is funded by NSF through both the MARGINS Program (now GeoPRISMS) and the EarthScope Program, and funded by the U. S. Geological Survey through the Multi-Hazards Demonstration Project. The project includes researchers from Virginia Tech, Caltech, the USGS, and Mexican partner institutions CICESE and UABC, Mexicali.

Nanometrics Inc., manufacturer of the Trillium series of broadband sensors, has recently updated the response for Trillium models 120 and 240.

PASSCAL provides these new response files for Antelope in our FTP download area.

A new posting, "Updated Instrument Response for Trillium_120, Trillium_240 (2 Generations) and Taurus", provides information and links to Antelope response files; it is available here.

If you have questions about using these new response files, please contact pmiller [at] passcal [dot] nmt [dot] edu (Pnina Miller) of the Sensor Group.

The 7th annual Polar Technology Conference will be hosted by IRIS/PASSCAL on 24-25 March 2011, at the Albuquerque Marriott, 2101 Louisiana Boulevard NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87110 USA. The primary purpose of this conference is to bring together Polar Scientists and Technology Developers in a forum to exchange information on research system operational needs and technology solutions that have been successful in polar environments.  This exchange of knowledge helps to address issues of design, implementation, and deployment for systems that are to achieve their research goals in the Polar Regions.

The PASSCAL Instrument Center is getting the New Year off to a bang with the Pearl Hot Springs active source experiment.  The Pearl Hot Springs experiment is a multidisciplinary study to explore the Basin and Range normal faulting in the area near Silverpeak, NV (see map). The Principal Investigator, Katie Keranen from the University of Oklahoma, along with her collaborators, Randy Keller, OU and Daniel Stockli, University of Kansas, planned Geologic mapping of the area, a Magnetic Survey, a GPS Survey and possibly a Ground Penetrating Radar survey to accompany the Seismic Study.  The PIC Texans and geophones were used for 2 active source seismic deployments within the Pearl Hot Springs experiment.

Happy 2011, and thank you for your active participation during the PASSCAL Pre-AGU workshop (December 2010)!  We appreciate your input and your questions.