NCEDC News/Blog

SAFOD Pilot Hole data available at the NCEDC

Categories:   Data Availability  |  San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD)  |  Parkfield Earthquakes  |  Data Holdings

January 15, 2005 

January 15th, 2005

The NCEDC is pleased to announce the availability of seismic waveform data from the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth (SAFOD) Pilot Hole in Parkfield. SAFOD is one component of the EarthScope Major Research Initiative funded by the National Science Foundations (NSF).

The SAFOD pilot hole is a separate, 2.2-km-deep scientific drilling experiment at the same surface location as SAFOD. This site is ~ 1.8 km SW of the San Andreas fault near Parkfield, CA, on a segment of the fault that moves through a combination of aseismic creep and repeating microearthquakes. It lies just north of the rupture zone of the 1966, magnitude 6 Parkfield earthquake, the most recent in a series of events that have ruptured the fault five times since 1857. The Parkfield region is the most comprehensively instrumented section of a fault anywhere in the world, and has been the focus of intensive study for the past two decades as part of the Parkfield Earthquake Experiment. The pilot hole is a collaborative effort between the International Continental Drilling Program (ICDP), NSF and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

The first available SAFOD Pilot Hole data consists of ~ 5600 triggered events from 2002/09/13 through 2004/05/30. The data were recorded on 96 data channels (32 3-component sensors) at various depths at sample rates of either 250 Hz, 500 Hz, 1000 Hz, or 2000 Hz. Continuously recorded data surrounding the magnitude 6.0 Parkfield earthquake on 2004/09/28 will be available shortly.

For more information on SAFOD data available through the NCEDC, see the NCEDC SAFOD web page.

The NCEDC is a joint project of the University of California, Berkeley and the USGS. Please send us email at ncedcinfo@ncedc.org or fill out our comments form if you have questions or comments about these changes.