Reducing Operational costs

The increased scientific activity in the rural Parkfield area due to SAFOD has lead to an increased demand for site access and development on privately owned property and a corresponding increase in access fees charged by private land owners. As a result land use fees paid by the HRSN project have increased dramativally from less than $\$1000$ annually prior to the SAFOD effort to over $\$13,000$. This represents over $15\%$ of the entire HRSN budget with no corresponding increase in support from the project's funding agency. To compensate for the increased landowner costs, maintenance efforts have had to be cut back, and network performance has suffered.

To help alleviate the problem, this year we have developed plans to minimize our dependence on access to private lands. This has primarily involved developing alternative telemetry schemes for the HRSN sites in such a way as to minimize the additional effort and equipment needed to implement the schemes. Also central to this effort has been reaching cooperative agreements with other agencies involved in research in the area (i.e., USGS and UNAVCO). Initial field efforts to implement the plan have recently begun and are expected to be completed before the end of summer 2008.