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USArray Data Processing for the Next Generation of Seismologists

July 25, 2013

This August, Northwestern University will again host the USArray Data Processing short course, but this year there will be an introductory version of the course as well as an advanced version. The short courses are attended by graduate students in seismology from research universities all across the USA. The purpose is to teach and train the students in effectively handling the opportunities and challenges arising from the big data produced by USArray. USArray, a main pillar of the NSF Earthscope program, is a 400-instrument, continuously recording six-component seismic and atmospheric observational network that gradually occupies more than 2000 sites all over the USA.

These courses are sponsored by the NSF through its Earthscope program and IRIS. They are facilitated by a 30-computer classroom and associated IT staff in NU’s main library. EPS professor Suzan van der Lee hosts and coordinates the courses between the library, IRIS, the instructors, and participating students. Graduate student Emily Wolin completed the course in 2011 and will be giving a lecture in the advanced course this summer. The EPS Department will host the two groups for breakfast in the new F-wing atrium of Tech on Aug 6 and Aug 12.

Later this fall, Van der Lee, Wolin, graduate students Bollmann and Witek, and colleagues from the University of Minnesota and Washington University will be traveling to Ontario, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to remove a smaller Earthscope seismic network of 82 stations that they installed there two and a half years earlier to study the evolution of the Archean and Proterozoic components of the strong North American continental core, including a striking structure that represents a failed attempt to split Wisconsin from Minnesota through the emplacement of a new ocean.