SCEC Award Number 13142 View PDF
Proposal Category Individual Proposal (Data Gathering and Products)
Proposal Title The SCEC Borehole Instrumentation Program
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Jamison Steidl University of California, Santa Barbara
Other Participants Val Gorbunov, Matthew Cook
SCEC Priorities 6, 6, 1 SCEC Groups Seismology, EEII
Report Due Date 03/15/2014 Date Report Submitted N/A
Project Abstract
 The SCEC borehole program continues to be a collaborative effort between SCEC and other agencies to maintain the existing network of borehole stations in California and to facilitate the integration of this data into CISN and the Southern California Earthquake Data Center. The borehole program is highly leveraged, taking advantage of the resources of other programs and agencies that are active in monitoring southern California earthquake activity.
The philosophy behind this seismic monitoring infrastructure program is that all data should be integrated with the existing regional network infrastructure for real-time transmission, processing, and archival. This provides all researchers with immediate access to the data through multiple interfaces, such as the SCEDC or IRIS DMC. The networks benefit from the use of the borehole data, as the borehole waveforms tend to have lower noise giving rise to cleaner arrivals, making them well suited for determining earthquake locations.

The operations and maintenance of the borehole stations requires an active role in assisting with the maintenance of network and data center operations. Normal yearly operations require some effort as the number of stations continues to increase. In a typical year, approximately 2-4 of the operating SCEC sites are visited and maintenance conducted. The continuous real-time data exchange between Caltech and UCSB allows for quality control of the data. Collaboration with the NSF NEES program and the cyber infrastructure that has been put in place at UCSB through this program facilitates this data exchange.
Intellectual Merit The borehole instrumentation program contributes to SCEC goals in a number of ways. While funded primarily as a data gathering effort, the data is useful for locating regional seismicity, improving our understanding of crustal structure and imaging faults. The data is also important for understanding both the linear and non-linear response of near-surface geology, as they provide the case histories needed when larger earthquakes are recorded providing large strain data.
Broader Impacts Undergraduate and graduate students have always been, and continue to be used in the borehole instrumentation program for both fieldwork, and data analysis and more recently data dissemination through integration with the NEES@UCSB data portal. These students are getting hands-on experience with instrumentation and data processing, a unique aspect of their education and training as the next generation seismologist and geophysicist.
Exemplary Figure Figure 3. Photos of the SBEPI sensor installation at the Central Fire Station (CFS) in Downtown San Bernardino.
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