Overview of the Mini-Plate Boundary Project

The Integrated Instrumentation Program for Broadband Observations of Plate Boundary Deformation, commonly referred to as ``Mini-PBO'', is a joint project of the BSL, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) at Menlo Park, the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism at Carnegie Institution of Washington (CIW), and the IGPP at UC San Diego (UCSD). It augments existing infrastructure in central California to form an integrated pilot system of instrumentation for the study of plate boundary deformation, with special emphasis on its relation to earthquakes. This project is partially funded through the EAR NSF/IF program with matching funds from the participating institutions and the Southern California Integrated Geodetic Network (SCIGN).

The project has three components. One is focused on the San Francisco Bay area, and augments existing instrumentation along the Hayward and San Andreas faults with up to 8 sites with borehole tensor strainmeters and seismometers, downhole pore pressure and tilt sensors, and geodetic GPS receivers. The second component of this project is to link the BARD network in central and northern California to the SCIGN network in southern California through the installation of 9 continuous GPS sites in the Parkfield area of central California. The third component is InSAR and supports the skeleton operations of a 5-m X-band SAR downlink facility in San Diego to collect and archive radar. In addition, some funds are used to develop an online SAR database for WInSAR users.

As part of the first component, four borehole sites were drilled during the summer/fall of 2001, at Ohlone Park (OHLN) in Hercules, on San Bruno mountain (SBRN) near Brisbane, at the Marin Headlands (MHDL) in Golden Gate National Recreation Area, and on Ox Mountain (OXMT) near Half Moon Bay. Two of these sites have been instrumented with newly fabricated borehole tensor strainmeters and seismometers, and downhole pore pressure and tilt sensors will be added in the near future.

Please note - as of 5:00 PM 6/30/2003, the BSL has modififed the FIR filters on the Mini-PBO Q4120 dataloggers. The NCEDC News report contains more complete information.

Network Codes

BK (also includes the BDSN, NHFN, and MOBB) and UL

Typical Station Equipment

3-component tensor strainmeter (designed and built by CIW)
3-component geophone (Mark Products)
Atmospheric pressure
Pore Pressure
Geodetic GPS
Heat flow
Tiltmeter
24-bit Quanterra Q4120 digital data logger and a 18-bit ZENO-3200 data logger
GPS clock
Continuous telemetry to UC Berkeley and to the USGS
Backup power supply

Typical Recorded Channels

As part of this collaboration, the borehole sites will have two sets of digital data loggers. The table below lists which channels will be recorded and the SEED network and location codes which will be used.

Sensor	Network Code	Channel Code	Location Code	Rate (samples/sec)	Sampling Mode	Datalogger
Tensor strainmeter	UL	RS1, RS2, RS3	T0	1/600	Continuous	ZENO-3200
Tensor strainmeter	BK	US1, US2, US3		0.01	Continuous	Q4120
Tensor strainmeter	BK	VS1, VS2, VS3		0.1	Continuous	Q4120
Tensor strainmeter	BK	LS1, LS2, LS3		1.0	Continuous	Q4120
Tensor strainmeter	BK	BS1, BS2, BS3		20.0	Continuous	Q4120
Tensor strainmeter	BK	HS1, HS2, HS3		100.0	Continuous	Q4120
Geophone	BK	BP1, BP2, BP3		20.0	Continuous	Q4120
Geophone	BK	EP1, EP2, EP3		100.0	Triggered	Q4120
Atmospheric Pressure	UL	RD1	T0	1/600	Continuous	ZENO-3200
Atmospheric Pressure	BK	LDO		1.0	Continuous	Q4120
Pore Pressure	BK	LDD		1.0	Continuous	Q4120
Heat Flow (?)	UL	??	T0 (?)	1/600	Continuous	ZENO-3200
Tiltmeter (?)	UL	RAX, RAY (?)	T0 (?)	1/600	Continuous	ZENO-3200

Network State of Health

Not available at this time.

Station and Channel Information

Map of Mini-PBO stations
Table of Mini-PBO stations
BK Information Directory, including
- List of station locations
- List of available channels
  - Year/month/day format
  - Year,doy format
UL Information Directory, including
- List of station locations
- List of available channels
  - Year/month/day format
  - Year,doy format
Instrument Response
Information on Quanterra 4120 FIR Filter changes - 6/30/2003

Data access

Waveform data from the BK network are available in SEED format at the Northern California Earthquake Data Center. Several tools provide access to SEED format data at the NCEDC, both in terms of querying the archives and allowing data requests.

Querying the archives
- SeismiQuery at the NCEDC
- NetDC Request Form
Requesting data
- NetDC Request Form

Help on using these tools is available.

GPS data from Mini-PBO sites are available through the BARD network:

Raw (for selected sites)
RINEX
Site Logs (receiver and antenna type history)
Holdings listed by GPS Week (see Calendar)

Reports

Report on the Mini-PBO Borehole Adapter for GPS
Reports on the Mini-PBO from the Annual Report of the BSL:
AGU poster from the Fall '02 meeting (PDF)
USGS Crustal Deformation Project
- Mini-PBO Project

Collaborations

As described about, the Mini-PBO is a collaborative experiment among

Other useful links

The Earthscope Project
- The Plate Boundary Observatory

M9.0 off west coast of northern Sumatra | Tremors on the San Andreas Fault
M6.0 near Parkfield, CA | M6.5 near San Simeon, CA

Directions | Seminars | People Finder | Open Positions | Internal

Berkeley Seismological Lab
215 McCone Hall, UC Berkeley
Berkeley CA 94720-4760
www@seismo.berkeley.edu