SCEC Award Number 16286 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 Michelle Dunn, Haley Trindle, Kenneth Hudson
SCEC Priorities 6e, 6c, 6d SCEC Groups Seismology, GMP, EEII
Report Due Date 03/15/2017 Date Report Submitted 04/05/2017
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, to facilitate the integration of this data into CISN and the Southern California Earthquake data center (SCEDC), and to improve the dissemination of borehole data. 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. This data is made available online to the public and research community, both through the SCEDC and the UCSB data portal. Organizations the SCEC borehole instrumentation program collaborates with include Caltech, ANSS, NSMP, and the California Geological Survey. Other collaborators include the UC San Diego HPWREN program, the NSF EarthScope PBO program at UNAVCO, the NSF funded project to image the San Jacinto Fault zone, which has been leveraged along with USGS funding to include the installation of additional shallow borehole sensors along the San Jacinto fault, now part of the Anza Network. In 2015, the SCEC borehole program began a new collaboration with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in support of the UCSB Geotechnical Array Monitoring Project, previously funded by the NSF NEES program. This two-year funding agreement, which began in May of 2015, provides continued support for the web-based data dissemination portal, and real-time continuous monitoring operations and data processing software, an important leveraged component of the SCEC borehole program.
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 baseline low-strain 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. In 2016, two new students, Ethan Wang and Sam Bell, both junior undergraduate geophysics majors joined our team.
Exemplary Figure Figure 2. UCSB field engineer Paul Hegarty and Rob Steller prepare for installation of newly designed SBEPI sensor (left) and then perform orientation of the sensor at 96 meters depth at the CFS site in Oc-tober, 2016. Photo Credit – J. Steidl