Goals and Progress Towards Supporting Magnetotelluric Surveys from the IRIS PASSCAL Instrument Center

Abstract:

Under a five-year NSF cooperative agreement “Seismological Facilities for the Advancement of Geosciences” (SAGE), IRIS has begun to establish a pool of portable magnetotelluric (MT) instruments at the PASSCAL Instrument Center (PIC) that are available for use by the scientific community. The PIC is a recognized center of excellence for providing portable instrumentation to facilitate seismological research, and this new program leverages its expertise to broaden participation in MT research. This MT instrument pool at the PIC provides a fundamentally new resource for the U.S. MT community by making available modern instrumentation with comprehensive training and data handling support at no cost for NSF-sponsored investigators. The implementation of this new MT capability has been guided by the scientific community via the PASSCAL Standing Committee (PASC) and Electromagnetic Advisory Committee (EMAC), driven especially by two working groups which advise on technical issues related to MT instruments, data processing, and data formats.

In this presentation, we will provide an overview and status report of the SAGE MT facility. This will include updates on salient efforts such as the new long-period and wideband/broadband MT instruments being procured for the facility, the drafting of a new MT data standard (MTH5), development of a new open access MT data processing software workflow, and the current and future opportunities for professional development being organized to encourage the next generation MT researchers.