Special Interest Groups

The 2019 SSA Annual Meeting offers three special interest group meetings. All meetings are free to attend, but RSVP is required, which is made during the meeting registration process.


Canadian Cordillera Array (CCArray)

Thursday, 25 April, 8–9:30 p.m.

Description

This brief meeting will provide an update on the Canadian Cordillera Array (CCArray) (www.ccarray.org). This new international initiative seeks to develop an integrated plate boundary observatory that bridges critical gaps in seismological and GNSS station coverage along the North American plate boundary region in western Canada. The goal of CCArray is to enable trans-disciplinary research focused on Earth systems processes and boundaries from the core to the magnetosphere.

Attendees are encouraged to contribute ideas to the design and implementation of the network and become involved in this research program at an early stage in its development.

Conveners

David Eaton (University of Calgary), Roy Hyndman (University of Victoria), Pascal Audet (University of Ottawa)


Offshore Facilities for Solid Earth Geoscience

Wednesday, 24 April, 7:30–9 p.m.

Description

This brief meeting will focus on the current state and future evolution of offshore facilities available for Solid Earth geoscience research. Topics include cutting-edge infrastructure that is and will continue to be instrumental for supporting seismic and other geophysical studies in the offshore environment, such as the U.S. Ocean Bottom Seismic Instrument Pool, the National Marine Seismic Research Facility and the Ocean Observatories Initiative. Collectively, these facilities represent a unique capability to sample the solid earth at variable spatio-temporal resolutions across the ~70% of the globe covered by the oceans.

We will provide brief overviews of the current state of several existing offshore facilities. Representatives from relevant oversight committees will be present during a Q&A session to discuss future priorities for existing and evolving frontier offshore facilities.

Conveners

Emily Roland (University of Washington), Anne Trehu (Oregon State University), Jackie Caplan-Auerbach (Western Washington University)


Seismic Instruments for the Coming Decade

Friday, 26 April, Noon–1:15 p.m.

Description

This group will explore recently developed seismic instrumentation technologies and discuss their observed (or projected) performance and usability. Participants will focus on instrumentation that is or will be implemented as part of the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) capabilities that serve the seismological community.

In recent years there have been a variety of developments in seismic instrumentation that are seeing wide use in research seismology, ranging from improved emplacement methods for broadband sensors to autonomous (“nodal”) geophone sensors. IRIS has recently gained substantial experience with posthole-style sensor installations in Alaska and is presently embarking on a multi-year effort to enable a new level of wavefield imaging capability as part of the IRIS PASSCAL program.

Further, over the next several years IRIS will be implementing a system of instruments dedicated to rapid response efforts for geohazard events, considering such features as ultra-portable packaging concepts, mesh-network telemetry, and combined seismic-GNSS capability.

We invite participation from those interested in instrument performance or capability and who would like to discuss the needs and requirements of the community’s future instrumentation activities.

Conveners

Bob Woodward (IRIS)