Quarterly Report to the Harry Reid Center

UCCSN-DOE Cooperative Agreement

Task 12: Seismic Monitoring

PI: James N. Brune

UNR Seismological Laboratory

December 2000

Progress:

During this reporting period (Oct-Dec 2000), we have maintained seismic operations under the QA procedures which have been established with the HRC. Data collection has been above 97% overall.

We reported in technical memoranda on two earthquakes, both of ML 3.4, south of the Specter Range in this period. These earthquakes both triggered most of the 10 new strong-motion instruments and thus provided actual tests of the instrumentation. The two earthquakes had similar north-striking nodal planes.

We have received a second round of minor comments on the FY98-99 seismicity report and anticipate that a final document will be submitted by January 10 of the new year.

Work has begun on drafting the FY00 (10/01/99 – 09/30/00) seismicity report. There were 2313 earthquakes located with the Yucca Mountain seismic network in this time period, with the largest being only ML 3.09.

One new permanent station in the digital network was installed in this period – “Cinder Pit” near Lathrop Cone just off US 395 between Mercury and Beatty. Standby batteries and a wind generator for charging were installed at the Shoshone Peak telemetry site.

GPS measurements and battery replacements were done at analog sites in Death Valley National Park.

The documentation for the revision of the program MLCALC has been prepared, and the final approved Phase I documents were submitted to the Software Configuration Secretariat by the end of the year. Work has begun on Phase 2 documentation.

Problems:

The backlog of event location work rose to nearly 40 days at one point in this quarter, but procedures now in place, as well as more availability of analysis personnel, has decreased that to only 6 days by the end of the year.

Plans:

We plan to continue to maintain a short backlog (3-5 days) of seismic event processing during the next quarter.

We will validate new software versions of two major programs, both acquired software from the USGS, during this coming quarter. Changes are related to Y2K compliance.

We will complete a draft of the FY00 (10/01/1999 to 09/30/2000) seismicity report during the coming quarter and finalize the earthquake catalog for that period.

We will make GPS measurements at non-SGBDSN sites which were used in the FY00 seismicity catalog.