Frank L. Vernon - US grants

The research objective is modification and testing of an existing broadband seismometer for eventual installation in ocean borehole OSN-1, drilled by the ODP in March of 1991 (Leg 136). Augmentation of world-wide seismograph coverage through the addition of ocean floor seismic observatories will improve earthquake location, and allow the more accurate determination of deep Earth velocity structure. %%% Understanding why and where earthquakes occur is essential to mitigating these natural hazards. The earth motions induced by earthquakes also provide detailed information on deep earth structure. Such information is crucial to understanding such phenomena as the Earth's magnetic field, and the distribution of mineral resources on the Earth's surface. Our ability to measure earthquakes, however, is severely limited by geographic constraints on the placement of seismometers. Heretofore, the two-thirds of the Earth's surface that is water-covered has been inaccessible to seismometer coverage. Emplacement of borehole seismometers in ocean-sub-seafloor observatories is one solution proposed. This research is the first step in the creation of a network of ocean observatories: the modification and land-testing of a bore-hole seismometer capable of recording earth motions over a wide band of frequencies.

9300613 Orcutt This award will support a cooperative instrument development program by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the University of Miami. The primary objectives of the project are to develop an test broad- band seismometers for deployment in the deep ocean. Such instruments are necessary for studies of ocean crustal structure and for global seismic studies of the earth's interior. These instruments will be used too determine the optimum deployment strategy for long-term seismic stations in the deep sea. ***

9504308 Orcutt This renewal award supports development of instrumentation for deploying seismometers in the deep ocean at a hole (OSN-1) drilled by the Ocean Drilling Program near the island of Hawaii. The overall objective is to enable measurement of seismic activity accurately and over long periods at ocean bottom sites, to fill major gaps in recording worldwide earthquake activity which is primarily limited to land measurements. With their previous award, these Scripps Institution of Oceanography investigators, in collaboration with colleagues at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, have prepared and tested (in a test well on land) a seismograph system suitable for installation in a borehole. In the present work they will prepare a suitable housing for the seismometer to withstand deep-ocean pressures, and will design and build equipment to install the seismograph and data recording package in the ocean bottom borehole from a ship at the sea surface.

9523541 Orcutt This team of investigators from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Massachusetts), Scripps Institution of Oceanography (University of California, San Diego, California) and Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (University of Miami, Florida) will jointly develop and test three types of deep-ocean seismometers as a pilot experiment for a set of ocean sensors to expand the existing land-based "global" seismic network to one which has truly global coverage. Global seismic coverage with broadband seismometers provides a capability to accurately define the interior structure of the earth with resolution presently not possible, and it provides a capability to significantly improve warnings for tsunamis. The instruments to be used in the present project are all "broadband" sensors, and will be deployed respectively 1) lying on the seafloor, 2) buried slightly within marine sediments, and 3) within an existing seafloor drill hole. All deployments will be carried out for the same 3-month period in early 1997. The borehole deployment will use a specially developed system (Scripps Institution) to place the instrument in the borehole; the buried sensors will be emplaced with a system developed at University of Miami. Tests will take place near Hawaii, and results of all three systems will be compared with a permanent land seismometer on the island of Oahu as well as with each other. This project is jointly supported by Ocean Sciences and Earth Sciences Divisions of the Geosciences Directorate at NSF, and follows earlier development and testing programs of component instruments. It is expected that this test will allow decisions to be made about what types of deployments (surface, buried or in drillholes) will be optimum for future "ocean seismic network" deployments. ***

9902422
Masters

This project is to study seismic anisotropy, which can offer important clues about the crustal evolution and the dynamics of the mantle. The project proposes a new way of simultaneously using three-component single station and array data of broad-band P wave arrivals that may be less sensitive to tradeoffs between anisotropy and isotropic heterogeneity or to tradeoffs between spatial extent versus strength of anisotropy. This method provides a new tool to image the anisotropic properties of the near-receiver upper mantle and crust. This study will provide both a more realistic view of the behavior of P-waves, characterizing the deviation of longitudinal motion from the source-receiver great circle and providing a different method of characterizing anisotropy.

Collaborative Project
OCE 98-19615
Vernon
OCE 99-000943
Collins

The recommended project will examine the comparative performance of seismometers associated with the Ocean Seismic Network Pilot Experiment, a group of three seismometers installed at the OSN-1 site in and around ODP Hole 843B, located 225 km SW of Oahu, Hawaii. These seismometers were installed in the borehole, buried in mud (ooze), and on top of the seafloor sediments. The project will compute the detectability of earthquakes (signal-to-noise ratio) for all three seismometers, and compare them to results from other land-based seismic systems and earlier ocean-based seismic systems. In addition, there will be a focus on computing and analyzing the ambient noise spectra of the mud-buried and seafloor seismometers, especially in regards to sediment shear-wave resonances, compliance, and the effects of bottom currents and gravity waves. Evaluation of this data will lead to recommendations for revised designs and future OSN installations.
***

An unresolved and underdeveloped area for the evolving Internet is the issue of ubiquity. Rural areas
across the nation are affected by the lack of network access; solutions are either prohibitively expensive,
or many years away from implementation. The research and education communities have immediate
connection needs, for researchers working in remote areas (in the field, in observatories, and with
autonomous telemetry sensors) and for remote educational facilities, at reasonable performance levels to
the Internet.
The goal of this project is to create a substantial and robust wireless backbone network for bidirectional
traffic flows by expanding upon a prototype connection recently installed by the Measurement and Network
Analysis Group of the National Laboratory for Applied Network Research (NLANR) and the San Diego
Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO), as well as the School of
Engineering and its Center for Wireless Communications (CWC).
This proposal is a collaboration between network researchers and disciplinary researchers in geophysics,
and other fields. Multiple different users with different impacts will help to define and understand
requirements, as well as appropriate parameters for the implementation of a high performance wireless
networking environment, with high performance extending beyond raw speed and including aspects of
predictability, as well as spacial and temporal availability. The project is heavily leveraged with the existing
network measurement and analysis activity of NLANR, as well as the seismic measurement and analysis
activities at SIO.
The immediate impact of providing services to researchers and telemetry stations in the field and a delivery mechanism for distance education in disadvantaged areas (in San Diego County) is clear. This network will have the technological capability to accommodate a high volume of data (for both communications and telemetry), thus increasing the scope and area of many projects currently limited by these constraints. The wireless network's primary function as an applied test bed to address distance access issues over a
relatively large rural area in general, and to assess performance characteristics of such a network will result in long-term developments and advances in the area of Internet technology.
The impact of this Internet Technologies project will be substantial and wide-spread. Benefits to the
research and education communities - and ultimately, the public - include improved functional capabilities
(across a variety of disciplines), facilitated collaborations between institutions, better and more reliable
network access, and a prototype which can be emulated throughout rural areas in the U.S.

Orcutt 00-02595

Recommended project is for testing of a broadband, high dynamic range seismic data system in a land-based borehole at Pinon Flat Observatory in California. This work is needed to optimize borehole seismometer installation at about 20 proposed permanent sites in the deep oceans that are needed to fulfill objectives of global seismic coverage as defined by the IRIS Global Seismic Network (GSN), in conjunction with the international Federation of Digital Seismic Networks. This proposal covers a series of experiments to reduce installation noise that was experienced in an earlier seismometer borehole installation at the OSN-1 site near Hawaii.
***

0003544
Vernon

This is a project to study the Caribbean-South American oblique arc-continent collision zone using various geologic (mapping, structure), geochemical (Ar-Ar and U-Pb Geochronology), and seismic (active MCS with onshore/offshore recording using OBS instruments, passive array) techniques. There will also be a geodynamic modeling study that, very innovatively, includes the dynamics of crust-mantle interaction. The overall goal of the project is to understand further the geometry and chronology of a world class, arc-continent accretion event. Seosmic/geological cross-sections are to be derived for several transects across the orogen at different ages of collision. The group of investigators include highly capable seismologists in both active and passive seismology, as well as geologists familiar with the orogenic developments on land. The cooperation with Venezuelan scientists and students is excellent.
***

This collaborative ocean science technology development project builds upon successes achieved on land with temporary deployments of portable broadband seismographs. A scientific argument has been made to provide an equivalent capability for the oceans. Currently available portable broadband ocean bottom seismographs (BBOBS) and burial systems are prototypes and must be improved before the use of these seismographs in the oceans becomes routine. This project will develop a combination of burial system and buriable seismometer that will enable 2-3 BBOBS deployments per day. The burial system will become part of the U.S. National Ocean Bottom Seismic Instrumentation Pool (OBSIP) and will be available to the research community. The new burial system will use the force of gravity for seismometer burial, and because the new BBOBS uses a borehole seismometer that has a substantially smaller diameter than conventional models, the force required to bury the new seismometer will substantially less. Enhanced seismic coverage over the oceans is vital to improving seismic resolution to better address existing as well as new questions pertaining to solid Earth dynamics. The geophysical community will benefit from ocean bottom seismometers with measurement capabilities comparable to land-based stations that can be deployed and recovered quickly and at minimal cost. This project will construct and test one burial system and one BBOBS. Should the new buriable seismometer and burial system meet design goals, funding will be sought to upgrade up to 30 existing instruments with buriable broadband seismometers.

0121726 Orcutt

This project seeks to integrate disparate efforts in both the Earth sciences and information technology to develop a model approach for modern data collection and integration. The approach is to build upon existing sensor networks and wireless communications to develop the hardware and software needed for supporting research of the future and to make information available for emergency response, informed decision-making, outreach and education, and enhanced scientific discovery. In particular the existing southern California scientific and educational wireless network will be extended along the coast from San Diego to Santa Barbara and to the oceans beyond the Channel Islands. Because of southern California's reliance on water from the Sierra snow pack and the dependence of this source of water on climate, we will extend the network to include Yosemite National Park.
Using this test bed the requirements and utility of wireless networks for collecting and streaming environmental sensor data in real-time will be demonstrated. Multidisciplinary data sets (e.g. earthquake, ocean current, hydrometeorological, and ecological) will be integrated to advance our understanding and management of coastal, ocean, riparian, and terrestrial geophysical phenomena and ecosystems in Southern California and well off shore. The software tools which must be developed for this integration do not exist, although limited prototype systems are available.
In particular, existing concepts in object ring buffers (ORB) for collecting disciplinary data to virtual ORBs (VORB) for managing multiple connections to multiple field sensors will be extended. These VORBs will not only provide data to multiple users in real time, but will provide interfaces with archival ORB and more traditional databases. Many of these interactions will be mediated through XML wrappers which will provide the basis for data discovery. A rule-based programmable interface will be developed to dynamically reconfigure and prioritize data capture and analysis from this multiplicity of sensor networks. This approach should be scalable as network speeds increase and data volumes grow, likely geometrically.

Funding is provided under the Information Technology Research Initiative.

Award is for a project to install the first operational borehole seismometer in the deep ocean at the Hawaii-2 Observatory site. ODP Leg 200 drilled and cased a re-entry hole for this purpose during December 2001. This project will develop and test an improved seismic sonde, and develop a method and apparatus to lay a fiber optic cable from the borehole1.5 km to the Hawaii-2 Observatory junction box, using a deep submergence ROV. In addition, a thermistor string will placed in a nearby, uncased hole. After installation of the seismometer, it will be tested and validated by comparison with land-based seismometers and with a seismometer located on the sea bed at the H2O site.

This project will enhance a facility for calibration and testing of seismometers. Specifically, the project will upgrade two existing, observatory-class shake tables with new electronics and interferometric optical displacement sensors. The facility will be made available to all qualified researchers in the academic, government, and commercial sectors, and will be a invaluable community resource.

The research in this project will focus on dynamically adapting downstream processing and modeling as sensors are added to or removed from a real-time data network. The research will also include work on methods to detect automatically the occurrence of interesting phenomena in real-time data streams and to trigger responses such as data analysis, modeling computations or turning on or off parts of the sensor network. Once developed, this type of capability will be potentially useful to large-scale environmental observing projects such as NEON, Earthscope, NEES and ORION. The project builds on the wireless networking infrastructure developed under the HPWREN project, the data management approach developed under the ROADNet project, and existing ideas about "data grids" such as those being developed and tested under the BIRN and GEON projects. The latter data grid technology is built around the concept of finding and manipulating data after it is stored in databases. The proposed project will investigate how to extend data grid ideas to include real-time data streams and permit feedback between observations and the operation of the observing network.

Tasks involved including developing the data cache structure and data flow management needed for a distributed data-handling system for multiple real-time data streams of varying bandwidth, the development of an information discovery system capable of searching across a hierarchical and multi-disciplinary metadata structure, the extraction of metadata from real-time information flows, and the integration of asynchronous, autonomous processing capability at different stages of the data transport system. The work includes merging the existing ORB and SRB technology into a virtual object ring buffer (VORB) and virtual metadata catalogue architecture for real-time data. The planned design for the VORBs also includes the addition of data-push features. The project will produce a working prototype, with data flowing from a variety of different sensor networks including the Virtual Seismic Network, hydrological and meteorological observations from Yosemite National Park and the Santa Margarita River basin, the San Diego Coastal Monitoring and Observing System and the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System, a GPS/seismic system for Orange and Western Riverside Counties, and SDSU field stations.

The project has the potential for impacts in several areas of environmental research. Once developed, this type of capability will be potentially useful to large-scale environmental observing projects such as NEON, Earthscope, NEES, ORION, the LTER network, environmental engineering field facilities, and hydrologic observing networks. The successful development and demonstration of a technology to integrate and manage archived and real-time data coming from a diverse collection of observing systems could also provide a common framework for integrated access to environmental data collected from observing systems supported by a diverse collection of federal and state agencies.

Abstract
The objective of this Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) project is to procure instrumentation and equipment specifically for an Explosive Loading Laboratory (ELL), which is currently under construction. The ELL will allow for one-of-a-kind real time blast and impact testing of structural components, assemblies, and systems of critical infrastructure such as buildings and bridges in a controlled environment. The testing laboratory is the first facility in the world that can accurately and repeatedly performs simulated explosive loading tests and characterize their effects on structures for use in developing retrofit and hardening optimization technologies without creating actual explosions.
During large- or full-scale testing of structural systems or assemblies at the ELL, a large array of sensors will be distributed in specific locations such that precise measurements can be obtained to investigate the development of non-linear failure mechanisms. A vital element in the development of the ELL is the procurement of robust, state-of- the-art instrumentation and sensors that can be operated in an outdoor environment, data acquisition systems and high performance networking capabilities. The key components are: real-time distributed data-acquisition systems, a high-speed digital camera, camera measurement systems, a range of conventional sensors such as DCDTs.
The vision is to provide the ELL with sufficient instrumentation that can be used to integrate state-of-the-art blast engineering experimental and computational research into educational curriculum using internet-based technologies. The equipment requested for the ELL can be leveraged to promote research being conducted at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography (SIO) at UCSD, for further development of ROADNet, a network and information management system that will deliver data to a variety of end users in real-time.
The state-of-the-art ELL facility, will add a significant new dimension and capabilities to existing United States testing facilities and promote research in Structural Engineering, Dynamic Systems and Control, and Information Technology.

CMG RESEARCH: Improved Seismic Inference via Better SpectrumEstimation
Intellectual Merits: Much of the inference in seismology, from normal--mode studies to
analysis of faulting mechanisms, depends on having reliable estimates of spectra and, possibly
more important, reliable estimates of their uncertainties. The collaborative effort between
mathematics and geophysics in this proposal is being driven by the development and deployment
of high dynamic range broadband sensors networks in the field of seismology that require the
development and implementation of sophisticated data analysis tools to create a better
understanding of the earthquake source and Earth structure.
The spectra of the transient elastic body waves (P and S waves) provide fundamental
information and constraints on earthquake source properties and physics. Currently the state-of-the-
art for the study of the physics of earthquakes is the estimation of source parameters, usually
estimated from the spectra of the transient seismic waves.
Spectral analysis has recently undergone a revolution with the development of
sophisticated techniques in which the data are multiplied in turn by a set of tapers that are
designed to maximize resolution and minimize bias. In addition to minimizing the bias while
maintaining a given resolution, the multi-taper approach allows an estimate of the statistical
significance of features in the power spectrum. Developing quadratic inverse theory that utilizes
not only the spectral estimators, but the time and frequency derivatives of the spectrum, to
generate a much higher resolution spectra. This project will extend this theory from a univariate
theory to generalized multivariate theory. While the applications discussed here are seismic, it is
clear that there are other geophysical, scientific, and engineering applications that will benefit
from the proposed studies. Obvious candidates are climate studies (both paleo and modern), and
space physics.
Broader Impacts: Advancing discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training,
and learning. Broaden participation of underrepresented groups by participation of minority
students and by presenting project related web pages in English and Spanish. Broad
dissemination of results will be accomplished through conference presentations, journal articles,
and web presentations.

This proposal was submitted to NSF in response to the ITR solicitation NSF 04-012. This proposal is follow-on to an existing award: 0087344. This project will conduct systemic interdisciplinary and multi-institutional research regarding the quality of service achievable by a highly functional wireless cyberinfrastructure environment. While doing so, it addresses several diverse scientific networking predictability needs for rural and remote areas.

This three-year award is a collaborative project by the University of California-San Diego, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Indiana University to automate the extensibility and scalability of data-generating networks. Rapid advances and deployment of cyberinfrastructure and sensor networks have created opportunities for new knowledge of ecological systems and their role in global environmental processes. Expanding current networks and developing new networks capable of addressing the spatial and temporal variability of important ecological processes such as lake metabolism at regional to global scales will require novel technical improvements in an architecture that transports data from sensors to databases, allows dynamic control of sensors and reconfiguration of the network, addresses data quality assurance, provides data access and query to distributed data in the network as well as to other relevant datasets, and provides tools for analysis. Specifically this project has two major technical goals:
1. Develop new methods and tools to help automate the updating of data flows from dynamically deployed sensors to publicly accessible biological databases.
2. Develop a suite of new algorithms and software for analysis of biological information to automate detection (real-time) of events based on data from sensors and databases, with applications to classification of signals to biological or physical events or to sensor failure, allowing rapid response.
The dissemination of analytical tools and framework developed will be useful to existing research projects, evolving environmental observing systems such as National Ecological Observatory Network, networks, agencies, international partners, and K-16 teachers. Graduate and under graduate students will participate in the project. Both software tools and basic research data from this project will be incorporated into existing and ongoing professional development resources for teachers and instructional resources for students in grades 6-12.

0607685
Vernon

This award will support a two year extension of a currently funded CD project (BOLIVAR) which is investigating the processes of continental accretion in the Caribbean. Specifically, the project is investigating how arcs accrete to the northern edge of south America using various geologic (mapping, structure), geochemical (Ar-Ar and U-Pb Geochronology), and seismic (active MCS with onshore/offshore recording using OBS instruments, passive array) techniques. There is also a geodynamic modeling study that, very innovatively, includes the dynamics of crust-mantle interaction. The overall goal of the project is to understand further the geometry and chronology of a world class, arc-continent accretion event. Seismic/geological cross-sections are being derived for several transects across the orogen at different ages of collision. The group of investigators includes highly capable seismologists in both active and passive seismology, as well as geologists familiar with the orogenic developments on land. The cooperation with Venezuelan scientists and students is excellent.

In Venezuela, BOLIVAR has a formal multi-year counterpart, GEODINOS, funded by the Venezuelan government seismological organization FUNVISIS. With FUNVISIS, the PIs have completed a successful data acquisition effort consisting of active and passive land-marine seismic experiments, and numerous geologic/geochemical studies on the Venezuelan mainland and in the Leeward Antilles archipelago. Their study area is about the size of California and its continental margin, an area greater than 600,000 km 2 , and has an equally complex Late Mesozoic-Cenozoic history.

OCI 0944131
Hans-Werner Braun
University of California at San Diego

Abstract

This award supports Hans-Werner Braun's research at the University of California at San Diego through the High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN) which is an NSF funded wireless high bandwidth cyberinfrastructure, which originated in the year 2000 and has been continually evolving to include various research and education applications in difficult to reach areas, as well as first responder and public safety activities. The network operates in predominantly remote and rugged areas of Southern California, spanning from San Clemente Island in the Pacific Ocean, via the California coast, to the inland valleys and on to the high mountains, reaching an altitude of more than 8700 feet. It then extends across the desert, reaching sites close to the Arizona border. Many scientific disciplines and education activities benefit from the network, including a number of NSF-funded projects. Without access to this high-speed data Networking connectivity, many of these project research objectives would be difficult, and several even impossible to achieve.

Intellectual Merit
The collection of real-time data is one of the most valued aspects of the network, such as the deployment of various environmental sensors that enable an understanding of environmental conditions that would be had to obtain otherwise. Real-time data allows for increased knowledge and understanding of an array of scientific concepts such as heavily impact ecological systems on the earth and the tracking of transient events throughout the universe. Examples of significant accomplishments include the research on network workloads with a diverse traffic profile, as well as major discoveries by the Palomar Observatory, providing invaluable assistance during wildland fires, and the social aspects of enlarging Native American contacts with the mainstream populations, with major educational benefits being derived from such contact.

The two-year work scope for this renewal proposal is three-fold. (s) maintain and enhance the HPWREN cyberinfrastructure for its many interdisciplinary and multi-institutional research, education, and public safety activities, (2) continue the research on Quality of Service considerations on a highly functional wireless cyberinfrastructure environment, and (3) evaluate transition strategies towards an objective of a more sustainable infrastructure.

Broader Impact
Throughout its existence, the HPWREN project has been successful in its broader impacts, as evidenced by many news updates on the http://hpwren.ucsd.edu/web site. This project is centered around network research aspects and also serves as an enabling cyberinfrastructure for various science disciplines and education activities. While partnering with multiple institutions. HPWREN collaborators, alongside this project's NSF support, invested substantially into the overall environment, including by augmenting it with many projects of various scopes and sizes. Specific HPWREN research is ongoing in the areas of workload profiling, performance assessments, as well as backbone and access link Quality of Service and Policy Based Routine implementations and experimentations. Research also continues in the area of network impact-considerate intelligent sensors, forwarding data based on locally determined events, rather than continuously. The current stability and reliability of this network is a direct result of lessons learned in its multi-year development effort. This includes a significant investment in FCC-licensed spectrum radio system and an implementation of backbone link diversity, as well as upgrading of high-traffic links to 155Mbps capacity. Further enhancements are planned, such as a separate 45Mbps path to the Palomar Observatory bringing its aggregate bandwidth to 200Mbps of full-duplex links. Continuation of the HPWREN infrastructure and research environment is an objective of this project.

Understanding earthquake physics is a critical step on the road to forecasting the short-term behavior of faults with obvious consequences for hazard mitigation. This is a project whose goal is to examine the dynamics associated with earthquake rupture. The studies to be carried out will provide much more comprehensive constraints on the way that a major fault zone behaves. Specifically, the project will combine detailed imaging of the San Jacinto Fault (SJF) in Southern California using an array to characterize the fault zone in the subsurface. It will couple this with surface outcrop and mapping of the fault zone, paleoseismic analysis, GPS analysis of crustal deformation, and theoretical work on seismic propagation to understand how factors such as fault damage, juxtaposition of different rock types, and segmentation affect the behavior of the fault zone. The Principal Investigators bring together current ideas about the rupture process and outline an approach that may be able to provide a quantitative understanding of the evolution of fault zone structures and related deformation phenomena (seismicity, strain fields) in actively deforming regions. This approach requires a framework that accounts for faults with evolving geometrical and material properties, as well as time-dependent interactions between the seismogenic zone and underlying viscoelastic substrate.

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).

Intellectual Merit

This Major Research Instrumentation-Recovery and Reinvestment project will create a real-time infrasound array whose sensing elements are co-located with the 400 seismic stations in the USArray Transportable Array component of the NSF EarthScope program. This continuously sampled array, of an unprecedented scale, will provide opportunities for groundbreaking and interdisciplinary research in atmospheric acoustics, atmospheric science, and seismology. The array will sample mean values and fluctuations of the surface air pressure with nominal 70 kilometer station spacing, with a dynamic range of about 7 orders of magnitude, and with a sampling frequency of up to 40 Hz. This dense network of infrasound sensors will permit study of the nature of long-range infrasound propagation from regional to continental distances, and study of the sources of infrasound signals, using actual acoustic data, free of concerns about seismic-to-acoustic coupling. The array will not only record signals from a range of sources, it will permit study of propagation from these sources under widely varying atmospheric conditions. These data will be used to test atmospheric models and improve understanding of regional to long range infrasound propagation physics. Continuous monitoring of signals from repeating distant sources provides opportunities to probe high altitude winds, yielding valuable information to validate, tune, and improve global whole-atmosphere numerical weather and climate models. Recording actual pressure variations will aid studies of thermospheric attenuation, assess the utility of algorithms for correcting recorded signal amplitudes for wind effects and provide more data for full-waveform analyses. Atmospheric phenomena that can be studied with unprecedented spatio-temporal coverage include solar and lunar atmospheric tides, upper-level and lower-level jet streams, weather fronts, boundary-layer convection, tornadoes, nocturnal drainage flows, and gravity waves. Simultaneous and continuous observations of atmospheric and seismic noise will facilitate adaptive seismometry, a process analogous to adaptive optics in which the effects of atmospheric loading at the Earth's surface are accounted for in seismic channels to reduce noise at long periods. There also will be serendipitous avenues for research that will not be discovered until the data begin to flow. Real time data delivery capabilities will be utilized to allow open and free data distribution.

Broader Impact

This observatory will provide data for research in atmospheric acoustics, seismology and atmospheric science. As papers result from this dataset, it will be easier for institutions to attract researchers and students interested in conducting research in these areas. This network, and the data it will provide, will broaden the participation in science. It will provide many opportunities for training in data analysis, as well as validating models used in atmospheric science and atmospheric acoustics. It will provide opportunities for increasing the quality of very long-period seismic data for studies of the solid earth, and possibly reducing horizontal noise on seismic records by applying corrections derived from long period barometric data. The managing laboratory has a commitment to supporting the integration of research and education at every academic level. The data from the infrasound array will be made freely available in near real time, without restriction, through an on-line data management system, to everyone inside and outside the scientific community. Science teachers will be able to access data they are interested in and incorporate it into their science curricula. Project scientists will work with "Perspectives on Ocean Science," which is an earth and ocean science speaker series hosted by Birch Aquarium at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, to provide the public with direct access to up-to-date science in a presentation that is specifically designed for a lay audience. "Perspectives on Ocean Science" reaches an audience of almost 15 million viewers.

On Easter Sunday, 4 April 2010, the Mw 7.2 El Major-Cucapah earthquake occurred with rupture initiating in Baja California at the southern end of the Cucapah mountains, propagating to the northwest and terminating where the aftershocks concentrated just north of the California border. Since the Mw 7.2 El Major-Cucapah earthquake there has been a migration of seismicity to the north that has included the recent 7 July 2010, Mw 5.4 Collins Valley earthquake. This RAPID award will accelerate the instrument deployment for the existing NSF funded project (EAR-0908903) entitled: Collaborative Research: Structural Architecture and Evolutionary Plate-Boundary Processes along the San Jacinto Fault Zone. This is a joint project between USC, UCSD, San Diego State University, and UNAVCO. This RAPID project will use resources of UNAVCO to provide the most cost effective method for installation of new shallow borehole sensors. The funds are solely for the shallow borehole drilling, since USC is providing the borehole sensors and UCSD is providing the data acquisition system. The RAPID funding will allow for 7 installations.

The importance of real-time scientific data is ever increasing, particularly in mission critical scenarios, where informed decisions must be made rapidly. Furthermore, advances in the distribution of real-time data are leading many new transient phenomena in space-time to be observed. Presently however, realtime decision-making is infeasible in many cases that require streaming scientific data to be coupled with complex models. While EarthCube will provide an unprecedented framework for disseminating data sources, the use of real-time data raises an additional set of complex challenges that must be considered. This project is a pilot to demonstrate the importance of coodinating the geosciences around their real-time data gathering and use. The work will demonstrate a Cloud-Hosted Real-time Data Services for the Geosciences (CHORDS)

The vision behind CHORDS is to provide a real-time data management infrastructure that will: a)Provide a system to archive, navigate and distribute real-time data streams via the Internet; b)Be easily deployed and configured; c)Run on cloud infrastructure; d)Use transactions built on RESTful protocols (i.e. via URLs); e)Employ data and metadata formats that adhere to standards, which simplify the user experience; f)Be free and open source.Science derived from observing platform data is the result of years of planning before a deployment, for example, and millions of dollars are spent on the deployment itself in hopes of obtaining the desired dataset. Many geo-scientific experiments are often resource constrained. In such cases it is vital to guarantee the optimal allocation of resources to ensure that important events do not go unobserved. In geo-scientific domains it is not uncommon to analyze data after a field campaigns, only to detect sensor faults, calibration offsets or anomalous behaviors when it is already too late. Real-time data will enable the optimal allocation of constrained experimental resources by automating the detection of faults and anomalies. CHORDS will provide a framework to enable adaptive sampling, discovery and fusion of various real-time geoscientific data sources, thus facilitating a new means by which geoscience experiments are carried out. The use cases will illustrate this by showing traditional experiments would have missed events of interest due to lack of access to real-time data. Focus on the initial work of defining requirements, design and specifications. Begin to ingest a small subset of geosciences data streams into a prototype CHORDS structure built in the cloud. Participate in activities that strengthen the integration of real-time data being ingested via CHORDS into other EarthCube Building Block systems that are under development. They will focus on some initial test cases, in hydrology sensor data, radar data streams, the NCAR Lower Atmosphere Observing Facilities, and outreach to earth and oceans communities.

Extreme winds events can have substantial impacts on structures and transportation. The main methods for observing winds are ground-based weather stations and weather radar. Weather stations are highly accurate, but they are widely spaced and miss many small-scale wind events. Weather radars are able to view large areas at once, but are only looking at winds well above the surface of the earth. A group of researchers is testing a novel method to use seismic data to sense wind gusts. Wind is known to have a seismic signal, and in fact solid earth scientists regard these measurements as noise. This research grant will help to determine whether the noise seen in seismic data is actually useful for determining the intensity and location of wind gusts. If the signal proves to be useful, it could have a large impact on the atmospheric science community because seismic arrays are relatively inexpensive and are always collecting data. Improved wind data has potential implications for weather and climate models, structural codes, and wind energy. An early career postdoctoral researcher will also be supported by this award.

The researchers plan a study to determine the degree to which seismic arrays can be used to quantify the occurrence, intensity and directional orientation of wind gusts and intense sustained wind speeds. This research will make use of the Transportable Array (TA) of the NSF EarthScope program and a number of meteorological stations to perform the analysis. The following research questions are posed: a) Under what conditions do high surface winds produce a signal in the seismometers? b) At what frequencies does this occur? c) Is there a consistent relationship between wind gust magnitude and seismic response? d) Are the forms of b) and c) spatially consistent? e) How many false positives are identified? f) Are gust signatures differentiable across range of background sustained winds? g) To what degree are periods of high wind speeds not associated with large magnitude gusts quantifiable using seismic data? h) Can the two horizontal components recorded by the USArray seismometers be used to give the "angle of attack"?