Engineer installs broadband seismic system Q330 in the vault for Transportable Array station I16A near Newdale, Idaho. Image courtesy of USArray.
TBD Seismic stations installed in Alaska’s rugged and helicopter only accessible locations. Image courtesy Maria Sanders and Jeremy Miner from USArray.

About Our Client

The USArray component of the EarthScope experiment is a continental-scale seismic observatory designed to provide a foundation for integrated studies of continental lithosphere and deep Earth structure over a wide range of scales.

Funded by National Science Foundation, the USArray provided new insight and new data to address fundamental questions in earthquake physics, volcanic processes, core-mantle interactions, active deformation and tectonics, continental structure and evolution, geodynamics, and crustal fluids.

The deployment of the USArray / TA remote stations started in 2004 and grew to the level of about 450 stations with station spacing of ~70 km, rolled from West to East of continental USA, and currently is operating in Alaska. Through the course of the USArray / TA project, each remote station was commissioned and decommissioned five times, running at a single location for about two years.

From remote stations, data are transmitted in real-time to the USArray / TA Facility Data Center operated by Scripts Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego. The final data repository is located at the IRIS Data Management Center in Seattle for further distribution to IRIS members and its affiliates.

Project Objective

In order to meet its scientific objectives, the USArray/TA was designed to operate in real-time with maximum reliability and data availability. Configuration of each remote USArray/TA station consists of a broadband seismometer (the majority of seismometers in USArray/TA are the STS-2.5), the Q330 data acquisition, the EpiSensor accelerometer, two barometers, an infrasound sensor, a temperature sensor and VIE unit (Intelligent power management and communication device).

At the USArray / TA Alaska deployment, the surface Broadband seismometers were replaced by the borehole seismometer due to Alaska’s harsh environmental conditions (~70% of borehole seismometers are STS-5).

The USArray / TA Data Center runs the Antelope system software for remote stations data collection, quality control, and data analysis.

Project Achievement

The Kinemetrics Aspen platform implemented in the USArray / TA project delivered a 99.8% data return over ~1,800 installations in over ten years. The synergy of high-data quality and data availability of these synchronized data streams, coming from the multitude of sensors, allowed unprecedented progress in science: more than 130 Ph.D. dissertations and 250 peer-reviewed papers published, and more counting.

Project Insights

QUALITY INSTRUMENTATION

The broadband seismometers, surface and borehole, the accelerometers, the dataloggers are the most trusted and of best performance in their respective classes worldwide. Their MTBF is measured in tens of years.

SYSTEM FLEXIBILITY AND SCALABILITY

Kinemetrics Aspen platform with an open-architecture approach allowed a seamless increase throughout the project in the number of stations, the number of sensors at each station, and the repeated station repositioning.

SYSTEM EVOLUTION

The data quality and installation robustness were so impressive, that many universities and agencies adopted a number of stations spread over the territory to augment their own local seismic networks.

DATA RETURN

The hardware and software components of the Aspen platform were continually improved over 10+ years of the project, resulting in the world’s most successful network including ~1,800 installations. The USArray / TA implemented the Aspen platform is the “tried-and-true” solution with a proven data return of 99.8%.

Related Applications and Products

Learn more about the products we use to implement this application.

Feature Product Datasheet

Learn more about our environmental monitoring system by downloading the Aspen and Antelope datasheet.

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