Archived News

During February 2015, EPIC staff assisted Principal Investigators Sue Bilek, Rick Aster, Brandon Schmandt, and Lindsay Worthington with the installation of numerous single-channel nodes in conjunction with seven EPIC broadband stations (data) to image the Socorro Magma Body (SMB) beneath the Sevilleta National Wildlife Refuge in central New Mexico. 

Jan. 5, 2015

EPIC recently received reports of RT130’s failing when using two RefTek 4G CF cards at moderately low temperatures during an Antarctic experiment. We have duplicated the failure in our lab and in our testing the failure was associated with a specific version of RefTek well board (RT526D). Although we have not had failures in our testing with earlier or later versions of the board, our sample set is small and we cannot rule out problems with these boards when using two 4G CF cards. We have communicated with RefTek about the issue and at this time they are in agreement with these findings.

Angus Mackinnon of phys.org reported on November 10th, 2014 that

"Seven Italian scientists who faced jail for failing to predict a deadly 2009 earthquake were cleared Monday of manslaughter convictions that had sparked international outrage.

The seven men were sentenced to six years in jail in October 2012 after a court in the medieval town of L'Aquila found them guilty of causing multiple deaths by having negligently downplayed the risk of the town being hit by a major earthquake just days before the killer tremor struck in April 2009."

 

 On August 27, 3:22 am Napa, California experienced a M=6.0 earthquake,   causing significant damage to buildings in downtown and in the world-renowned vineyards of central Californa.  Dr. Rufus Catchings of the USGS' Menlo Park office led a deployment team consisting of USGS staff and volunteers, supported by George Slad of EPIC.

 

Late-stage graduate students! Postdocs! Researchers and faculty!

EarthScope/EPIC would like to invite you to register for our EPIC Users Workshop to be held on Sunday December 14th, 2014 (the day before the beginning of the AGU Fall meeting). 

This year’s workshop will give an overview of the EPIC facility, the services we provide and how to access them.  We will have two special guest speakers, PIs who have successfully planned for an run international and large-scale EPIC projects.  This year's speakers are Anne Meltzer of Lehigh University (large-scale broadband deployments in Pakistan, Tibet, and Mongolia) and David Okaya of the University of Southern California (large active source projects in Taiwan, New Zealand and Japan).

But wait, there is more! The EPIC Program Manager, Kent Anderson, as well as the EPIC Director, Bruce Beaudoin, will be on hand for questions and discussion as well.  Ask questions and discuss ideas about current/future projects before AGU really starts and the talks, posters, dinners, and other meetings start clamoring for everybody's attention and time!

This workshop will be useful to anyone who has an upcoming EPIC supported experiment, or is planning to propose an experiment, and will be particularly useful to current graduate students and new investigators.

Federica Lanza, a Ph.D. student at Michigan Technological University under Gregory P. Waite, spent the summer as the EarthScope/EPIC intern. During that time, "Fede" deployed instruments with EarthScope interns, presented her work at the 2014 EarthScope workshop, and completed two research projects related to short period sensor responses and long period noise analysis using PSD PDFs. Fede wrapped up her summer with a couple of weeks in the field at Mt. St. Helens, supporting the iMUSH project, along with several other EarthScope/EPIC scientists and staff. Some highlights of our intern's busy summer follow.

Jim Fowler's life was celebrated on June 27th at the EPIC. Members of Jim's family, as well as EarthScope/EPIC team members from both the past and the present, were on hand to share memories of Jim's life and his career with the EPIC.

Image: Fowler family members visiting the Jim Fowler Seismometer Testing Observatory, located at the EPIC in Socorro, NM.

 

On June 23, 2014, EPIC Senior Staff Scientist/Polar Project Field Engineer Dean Childs gave a talk on "Working in Antarctica" to an absorbed audience at the Socorro Public Library.

Dean's talk ran 1 hour and 45 minutes, including a followup Q&A. He discussed several topics with the 25+ attendees, who ranged in age from 7 to 70.

There will be several presentations by EPIC staff at the 2014 EarthScope Workshop, June 8-11, in Sunriver, Oregon.  If you can't see these posters in person in Oregon, have a look at them via the links below.

Several staff members of the EarthScope EPIC are making presentations at this year's Seismological Society of America Annual Meeting in Anchorage, Alaska.

Here follow abstracts for our three presentations, along with links to the posters.