Procedures

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 10th, 2017 (the day before the beginning of the AGU Fall meeting). 

This year's workshop will be a hands-on training session covering the complete process to build a PH5 archive, starting from 'raw' data and moving to a complete archive ready to be shipped to the PIC. We will provide a standard data set for the hands-on exercise so that participants can familiarize themselves with procedures for building and verifying a PH5 archive from raw data.

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.

Introduction

“Huddle”-testing sensors before field deployment is a key part of any seismic experiment.  Huddle-testing involves testing almost all components of the field station, for many stations, in parallel.  The number of stations that can be tested at one time is limited only by availability of personnel and lab space.

Huddle-testing potentially reduces crew time spent in the field, cost of the experiment, and the need to revisit sites.  Huddle-testing improves crew consistency and most importantly, the likelihood of successful station deployments and survival.

EPIC equipment is available to any research or educational institution to use for research purposes within the guidelines of established Governing Policies. These policies provide that data collected with EPIC equipment be archived at the EarthScope Data Management Center and that the data are openly available to the community. Instruments can be requested online using the EPIC Instrument Request Forms.

Who Can Borrow Equipment

What is Required if You Borrow Equipment

April 20th, 2009

These documents address things to consider regarding Station Siting Location/Access, Cultural Noise, and Suggested Materials.

EPIC can help guide you through various aspects of Station Installation, including Tasks, Time required, Crews needed, Recordkeeping considerations, and Suggested Materials. For broadband experiments the PI and students come to EPIC for several days of training before your experiment's field campaign begins. During the training session details of the experiment's logistic and climatic conditions are discussed and considered for the station design and installation procedures.

The construction of the vault for broadband seismometers has a direct impact on the data quality. The principle of broadband sensor vault design is to minimize temperature changes, and to distance the sensor pad from the surficial layer which tilts due to temperature, precipitation, solar insolation, wind, etc.

Nearby sources of ground noise, like footsteps or acoustic noise, are reduced by shallow burial (2-5 ft.) The construction must be adapted to the site and materials available. A decision will have to be made to balance the cost and labor of different vault designs against the length of deployment, resources available, and quality of data expected.

Finding a pre-existing enclosure is a tremendous savings in time and effort. This might include missile silos, power stations, abandoned mines, caves, or root cellars. Consider the details of cables, power, and locating a GPS antenna for timing at these sites.

May 7, 2009

Here are links to documents that will help you to think about seismic station siting considerations and seismic vault construction during planning stages, field reconnaisance, and instrument deployment. Also included here are links to guidelines and procedures for station installation and station servicing.

There is a long litany of things that can go wrong during station servicing, including:

One of the worst things that can happen during a deployment, especially a highly remote deployment, is not having the correct tools or supplies.  The following is a minimum suggested list of things to take if you are constructing a station that will house EPIC equipment for more than a few weeks. This list is in addition to the construction materials that will be used to make vaults, enclosures and fences.  Usually this would pertain to passive-source, broadband (or midband) experiments that deploy equipment for 1-2 years and will be visited approximately every three months during that time in order to check the data and the condition of the station.  EPIC will advise if any other specialty tools are required.  Please adjust quantities to provide for all installation teams and number of stations.