Alaska Transportable Array Station Affiliation Changes
The Transportable Array team planned to remove the remaining Alaska TA stations this summer during the 2020 field season. Due to local, state, and federal travel restrictions in response to the pandemic and with the support of the National Science Foundation (NSF), IRIS postponed removal of most of these stations to the 2021 field season. Data telemetry will continue until May 2021 and the Array Network Facility (ANF) will continue to support archival at the IRIS Data Management Center (DMC) along with processing onsite baler media as it is returned from removals.
The timeline of operations, transitions, and removals for the Alaska TA stations is being executed as follows:
- In Fall 2019, 43 stations were transferred to the Alaska Earthquake Center (AEC) under the AK network code, leaving 151 to be operated by IRIS.
- By May 1, 2020, 24 additional stations were transitioned to other operators.
- During the 2020 field season, all remaining stations continued to be operated with data telemetry and archival at the IRIS DMC.
- Limited station removals were done while adhering to all local, state, and federal travel restrictions as well as employing a limited contact strategy developed specifically for the Alaska TA project.
- By September 30, 2020, 45 stations will be transferred to the AEC under the AK network code as part of a funded award in response to the 19-048 NSF Dear Colleague Letter.
- On May 1, 2021, telemetry will be turned off of the remaining stations and real-time data collection will cease.
- During the 2021 field season, all remaining stations will be removed. All baler media returned before September 1, 2021 will be processed at ANF.
A subset of Alaska Transportable Array stations have been or are in the process of being transitioned to other network operators. Seismic data will still be archived and available via the IRIS DMC, with a change of network code and, in some cases, a change in sample rate or channel/location code. This might require adjusting data retrieval scripts. The full list of adopted or continuing Transportable Array stations is available under the virtual network _US-TA-ADOPTED. Note that this will be updated to include stations as their data acquisition is transferred.
Station hosts and the public can view data in webicorder or event views from stations or locate the nearest station with real-time data using the IRIS Station Monitor app.
A paper on the Alaska Transportable Array will be published in a focus section of Seismological Research Letters in November 2020 and is already available online at: https://doi.org/10.1785/0220200154. A longer format final report is in preparation and will be made available at: http://www.usarray.org/alaska.
IRIS would like to thank the National Science Foundation for their continued support of the Alaska Transportable Array project through NSF Award EAR-1261681.
-- Bob Busby and the Transportable Array Team
Station hosts and the public can view data in webicorder or event views from stations or locate the nearest station with real-time data using the IRIS Station Monitor app.
A paper on the Alaska Transportable Array will be published in a focus section of Seismological Research Letters in November 2020 and is already available online at: https://doi.org/10.1785/0220200154. A longer format final report is in preparation and will be made available at: http://www.usarray.org/alaska.
IRIS would like to thank the National Science Foundation for their continued support of the Alaska Transportable Array project through NSF Award EAR-1261681.
-- Bob Busby and the Transportable Array Team
