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About PASSCAL
The Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) Program for Array Seismic Studies of the Continental Lithosphere (PASSCAL) Instrument Center and EarthScope USArray Array Operations Facility (AOF) at New Mexico Tech support cutting-edge seismological research into Earth’s fundamental geological structure and processes. The facility provides instrumentation for National Science Foundation, Department of Energy, and otherwise funded seismological experiments around the world. PASSCAL experiment support includes seismic instrumentation, equipment maintenance, software, data archiving, training, logistics, and field installation.
Continued expansion of IRIS activities at New Mexico Tech via the EarthScope and other initiatives has spurred a major facility expansion, the EarthScope USArray Array Operations Facility. The AOF was officially dedicated on April 6, 2005 by the New Mexico Tech administration and the IRIS Board of Directors. The combined PASSCAL Instrument Center and AOF currently support a total of 33 professional New Mexico Tech staff, as well as a contingent of student workers.
PASSCAL and USArray Flexible Array equipment is available to any research or educational institution to use for research purposes within the guidelines of established policies. These policies provide that data collected with PASSCAL and/or USArray equipment be archived at the IRIS Data Management Center and that the data are openly available to the community. Instruments can be requested online using the PASSCAL Instrument Request Forms.
Recent News
Western Idaho Shear Zone: is snow in the forecast?
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.
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IRIS and IRIS/PASSCAL Projects Highlighted at AGU 2011 Meeting
The American Geophysical Union's annual fall meeting is the premiere annual event for the geoscience community, and the AGU Fall Meeting 2011 was bigger and better than ever. Several presentations at the meeting concerned IRIS/PASSCAL directly, while many others featured geoscience projects supported by IRIS. Here are links to abstracts for selected AGU 2011 presentations by IRIS and PASSCAL personnel, and for selected projects which benefited from IRIS/PASSCAL involvement.
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AGAP Project Reveals Details of Hidden Antarctic Mountain Range
PASSCAL's Polar Group supported AGAP deployments in one of the most extreme polar environments on the planet.
Results are now emerging from the AGAP Project, funded by the National Science Foundation through its Office of Polar Programs. AGAP, which stands for Antarctica's Gamburtsev Province, has been probing the Gamburtsev mountain range for years. These mountains, completely covered by Antarctic ice, were not even discovered until 1958. New data now coming out are showing that these mountains have a youthful topography much like that of the Alps in Europe, and have not been weathered significantly. Furthermore, the history of the root of the range can now be tracked back to one billion years in the past, with major rejuvenation events in the Permian and Cretaceous periods (~250 and 100 million years ago respectively). One reason the Gamburtsev range is important is that it is believed to be the initial site of Antarctic ice-sheet growth during major climatic changes some 35 million years ago.
Researchers Andy Nyblade of Penn State and Douglas Wiens and Patrick Shore of Washington University in St. Louis are part of the seismic portion of the project, called GamSeis. The IRIS/PASSCAL Instrument Center provided an array of broadband seismic stations used for the project by Wiens and Shore, along with Penn State's Nyblade, and Masaki Kanao of the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR).
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PASSCAL's Polar Group Revs Up for Antarctic Summer
This is the time of year when the Polar group at PASSCAL is busy deploying teams to the Antarctic. Since polar conditions make for difficult site installations, PASSCAL is pleased to present the following instructive videos of Antarctic station deployments.
Courtesy of Audrey Huerta of Central Washington University, here is a time-lapse video of the difficult installation of a POLENET seismic system on a rock surface at Miller Ridge in the Transantarctic Mountains. This installation took about 4 hours in real-time. You will see shadows encroaching as the sun sets toward the end of the four-minute video.
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Seismic Community Responds to Virginia Earthquake in a Big Way
When the earth shook near Richmond, Virginia on August 23, 2011 at 1:51 PM EDT (17:51:04 UTC), millions of inhabitants of the eastern seaboard were surprised by the magnitude 5.8 tremor. The seismic community has responded in force, rapidly deploying dozens of new stations to record aftershocks of this rare event. (The largest previous earthquake in Virginia's history was a magnitude 5.9 event in 1897.)
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Experiments
PASSCAL Experiment Map
IRIS News
- National Science Foundation Selects IRIS to Manage the Ocean-Bottom Seismic Instrument Pools Program
- Western Idaho Shear Experiment Completes 2nd Phase of Station Installation
- 2012 IRIS Workshop - Boise, Idaho - June 13-15 - SAVE THE DATES!
- Download the Report from the “Autonomous Polar Observing Systems” Workshop
- AGAP Project Reveals Details of Hidden Antarctic Mountain Range
Recent Earthquakes
- 3.66 -
- 3.34 -
- 5.5 - MOLUCCA SEA
- 5.6 - BIO-BIO, CHILE
- 5.6 - NEAR THE NORTH COAST OF PAPUA, INDONESIA