This year in the field, we will be deploying 100 Fairfield Geotechnologies Z-Land, Gen 2 3-component 5-Hz seismic nodes. These small seismometers measure movement of the ground or snow in the up-down, east-west, and north-south directions ("3 components of motion").
After the long journey from the USA to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, the nodes needed their batteries recharged. There is a 16-node charging rack at Crary Laboratory, so that meant placing batches of 16 nodes on the rack for ~2.5 hrs per batch to recharge the batteries. We cycled them through a few nights ago.
These nodes and charging racks are owned by IRIS PASSCAL (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology Portable Array Seismic Studies of the Continental Lithosphere) as part of their portable equipment pool of seismometers that are available for university scientists all over the USA to borrow for experiments. They provide great instrumentation and are an invaluable community resource!
While I was cycling the nodes on and off the charging racks through the night, the little blue penguin was busy reading Lucky by R.H. Webster, a great debut novel by a local El Paso author!
When time permits, we have enjoyed the espresso machine at the Coffee House near Crary. There are a few McMurdo employees who volunteer to staff the Coffee House, and we greatly appreciate their volunteer time.
These types of seismic nodes have been used all over the world on various seismic imaging and earthquake projects. My research group at UTEP currently has ~20 of them deployed near Pecos, Texas recording West Texas seismicity as part of collaborative work with the Texas Seismic Network.
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