SCEC Award Number 14204 View PDF
Proposal Category Individual Proposal (Data Gathering and Products)
Proposal Title SCEC Borehole Instrumentation Program
Investigator(s)
Name Organization
Jamison Steidl University of California, Santa Barbara
Other Participants
SCEC Priorities 6e, 6c, 6d SCEC Groups Seismology, EEII, GMSV
Report Due Date 03/15/2015 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 Southern 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 has grown over time, and many have now been in operation for more than a decade. In a typical year, approximately 2-4 of the operating SCEC sites are visited and maintenance conducted. The continuous real-time data exchange between CISN and UCSB allows for quality control of the data.
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, and 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. These stations also are helping GMPE modelers to understand the component of uncertainty in ground motion prediction that is related to the site effect.
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. Cyber Infrastructure built at UCSB to facilitate borehole data search and dissemination. Google-Map based interface showing earthquakes recorded at borehole stations. Example shows search results when the SCEC Wonderland School station (WNS-Figure 1) is selected from the drop-down menu.