Interdisciplinary Year-Round and Real-Time Geophysical Data from Mount Erebus

Richard Aster, Philip Kyle, William McIntosh, Nelia Dunbar, Richard Esser, Mario Ruiz, 
Matt Richmond
Department of Earth and Environmental Science and 
Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources 
New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology 
Socorro, New Mexico

During the 2002-2003 field season, we installed five novel geophysical observatories on the 
persistently active Mount Erebus volcano at approximately 78 degrees S and at elevations 
ranging from 2100 to 3700 m. Each station runs on year-round power systems consisting of solar 
panels and a wind generator, coupled with temperature-compensated power management and 
AGM lead-acid storage batteries. Data streams include broadband seismometry, dual-frequency 
(L1/L2) GPS, tiltmeters, IR radiometer, infrared, infrasound, exterior and instrumentation 
temperatures, system voltages and amperages, humidity, and wind speed and velocity. Data 
streams, including full BINEX GPS, are multiplexed and telemetered to McMurdo in time-
stamped packets using Guralp system digitizer hardware and 900 MHz spread-spectrum data 
links. 

At McMurdo, data streams enter an acquisition system employing Guralp Scream and USGS 
Earthworm protocols. Incoming data are buffered on the data acquisition machines at McMurdo 
and simultaneously exported to NMT via the McMurdo internet link using a compressed 
Earthworm protocol (with the exception of BINEX files, which are exported daily to both 
UNAVCO and NMT via ftp). From NMT, earthworm data streams are reexported to the IRIS 
Data Management Center for backup archiving. To ensure completeness of the data set in the 
face of occasional internet drop-outs between McMurdo and NMT that interrupt the compressed 
earthworm export, we implement a robust rsync data intercomparison algorithm with incremental 
recovery of hourly archive files between NMT and McMurdo. 

We will discuss design, cost, and technical considerations of instrumentation, power systems, 
monitoring and data transfer protocols. We thank Murry McGowan (Guralp Systems), Bruce 
Pauly (Digital Technology Associates), Barbara Bogaert (USGS) and the UNAVCO and IRIS 
Consortia for essential collaborations.This research supported under NSF OPP grants OPP-
9814290 and OPP-0116577