The Future of the Alaska Transportable Array

Date: 4/26/2019

Time: 03:45 PM

Room: Cascade II

EarthScope’s Alaska Transportable Array (Alaska TA) continues to collect high quality seismic data toward fulfilling its primary objective: to image earth structure beneath the North American continent. The 280-station network has high data delivery completeness, dipping somewhat in the cold, dark winters. The network installation was completed in 2017, and attention recently has been directed toward the durability and power-resilience of the stations.

We continue to engage with numerous collaborators (UAF Alaska Earthquake Center, USGS Alaska Volcano Observatory, NOAA Tsunami Warning Center, UNAVCO Plate Boundary Observatory, Canadia Hazards Information Service, UCSD, Yukon Geological Survey and Wildland Fire Management, NOAA National Weather Service, NASA Arctic Boreal Vulnerability Experiment, U of Utah MesoWest, BLM) in supporting supplemental environmental sensing to help address the sparse coverage of ground-based observations in the U.S. and Canadian Arctic. Through these partnerships, additional sensors have been added to Alaska TA stations to collect meteorological, strong-motion, soil temperature, and infrasound observations with plans to collect soil samples on future visits to stations.

As with the successful Lower48 TA, we expect a profusion of publications and dissertations that will carve and distill the rich Alaska TA dataset over the years to come. The additional diversity in sensors helps to correlate observations and generally leads to greater diversity in science results. As an installed and operating network of autonomous, telemetered stations, the Alaska TA is an opportunity for multi-disciplinary observations collected across a remote, rugged, and rapidly changing region.

Updates regarding the schedule for stations to be removed and plans for stations to remain will be presented.

Presenting Author: Robert Busby

Authors