HR: 1400h
AN: G43A-04 [Abstracts]
TI: PBO Borehole Strain and Siesmic Network
AU: * Mencin, D
EM: mencin@unavco.org
AF: UNAVCO, 6350 Nautilus Dr., Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Jackson, M
EM: jackson@unavco.org
AF: UNAVCO, 6350 Nautilus Dr., Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Anderson, G
EM: anderson@unavco.org
AF: UNAVCO, 6350 Nautilus Dr., Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Hodgkinson, K
EM: hodgkinson@unavco.org
AF: UNAVCO, 6350 Nautilus Dr., Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Hasting, M
EM: hasting@unavco.org
AF: UNAVCO, 6350 Nautilus Dr., Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Dittman, T
EM: dittman@unavco.org
AF: UNAVCO, 6350 Nautilus Dr., Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Johnson, W
EM: johnson@unavco.org
AF: UNAVCO, 6350 Nautilus Dr., Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AU: Meertens, C
EM: meertens@unavco.org
AF: UNAVCO, 6350 Nautilus Dr., Boulder, CO 80301, United States
AB:
UNAVCO is a non-profit, community-based organization funded by the National Science Foundation to install and
operate the geodetic component of EarthScope called the Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO). UNAVCO will install
103 borehole tensor strainmeters/seismometers and 28 borehole tiltmeters These instruments will be used to
study the three-dimensional strain field resulting from deformation across the active boundary zone between the
Pacific and North American plates in the western United States in hopes of increasing our understanding of the
causes and mechanisms associated with earthquakes and volcanic activity. This represents almost a tripling of
all installed borehole strainmeters in North America. Since the initial deployment of strainmeters in the early
1980's, borehole strainmeters have contributed valuable data at periods ranging from minutes to weeks with
sensitivities two to three orders of magnitude better than continuous GPS at periods of days to weeks. Borehole
strainmeters have been used to image earthquakes, slow earthquakes, creep events and volcanic eruptions in
the US, Iceland and Japan. A brief history of US BSM program is presented.
Initial PBO strainmeter deployments show promising results: imaging two slow slip events in the PNW along with
excellent tele-siesmic imaging. Exciting work has been done in the PBO community relating modeled strain from
the GPS network to observed strain from the BSM network. PBO also plans the installation of three volcanic arrays
at Mt St Helens, Yellowstone and Long Valley.
In addition to strainmeters, each borehole contains a three-component geophone and a pore pressure
transducer. A subset of the boreholes are also used for heat flow measurements.
When completed the PBO borehole strainmeter network will be the largest network of strainmeters installed to
date and one of the world's largest borehole seismic networks. These instruments will bridge the gap between
seismology and space-geodetic techniques and represents the first dense, geographically distributed
observations in this temporal regime in the US.
DE: 1294 Instruments and techniques
DE: 7294 Seismic instruments and networks (0935, 3025)
SC: Geodesy [G]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly