Flexible Array (FA)

The alligator photographed guards SESAME's station E22.  Locals report the alligator likely made a short traverse through the forest from a nearby river, where alligators are commonly spotted, to call the pond home.

If this photo (below) of a 6' 1" tall individual looking up at the top of the solar panel mast doesn't cause one to wonder how much snow the mountains near Cornucopia, Oregon receive, a Snow Cat (below left) at a nearby lodge certain makes it's clear - lots of it. This temporary seismic station installed in the mountains of eastern Oregon is part of Dr. Ray Russo's Western Idaho Shear Zone Earthscope Flexible Array experiment. Spanning eastern Oregon to eastern Idaho, the seismic network covers arguably some of the most remote and rugged mountains of the contiguous United States.

ETS, or 'episodic tremor and slip', is a recently discovered phenomenon in seismic research. Similar to earthquakes but much smaller in magnitude, ETS events are associated with the subduction zone of some convergent plate boundaries. One such region, the Cascadia subduction zone under the Puget Sound, is the focus of an experiment by Ken Creager's group at the University of Washington (UW), called Array of Arrays.

The USArray Flexible Array is a pool of instruments that is available for PI-driven research projects associated with the goals of EarthScope.  This pool of instruments is housed at the IRIS PASSCAL Instrument Center located at New Mexico Tech in Socorro, NM. The pool consists of broadband (325), short-period (100), accelerometer (20), and controlled source (1700) stations. Using both natural and controlled sources, these portable instruments permit high-density, short-term observations of key targets within the footprint of the larger Transportable Array. USArray's flexible component offers exciting opportunities for a variety of focused investigations requiring higher-resolution images embedded within the context of the Transportable Array.

   Data Delivery Policy

The Flexible Array is a pool of portable seismic instruments supported by the Array Operations Facility at the PASSCAL Instrument Center. The instruments are available for PI-driven research projects associated with the goals of Earthscope. The pool consists of broadband (325), short-period (100), accelerometer (20), and controlled source (1700) stations.