Plate Boundary Observatory Strain and Seismic Data

The Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO) component of EarthScope, operated by UNAVCO, is a geodetic observatory designed to study the three-dimensional strain field resulting from deformation across the active boundary zone between the Pacific and North American plates in the western United States. The observatory consists of arrays of Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers and strainmeters with collocated seismic sensors which will be used to deduce the strain field on timescales of days to decades.

The NCEDC serves as an archive for the PBO strainmeter and seismic data, which consists of borehole strainmeters and long-baseline laser strainmeters. Data from PBO has been assigned a network code of PB.

Network Code: PB

Typical Recorded Channels

Link to PBO SEED conventions

Seismic Sensors Typical Recorded Channels

Station Information

• PB Information Directory, including
  • List of station locations
  • List of available channels
    • Year/month/day format
    • Year,doy format
  • Instrument Response
    • SEED format
    • Simplified Responses

Data access

SEED data requests

Waveform data from the PB network are available in SEED format

Data access

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
• Access data through NCEDC web services

DART (Real-Time Data)

The NCEDC DART (Data Available in Real Time) is a buffer of real-time telemetry MiniSEED data that is accessible directly from the web or through data retrieval tools which will be available in near future.

Processed strain data

All PBO borehole strain data , laser strain data, and their associated environmental data are available in a "processed XML" format at 300 second (5 minute) sample interval. All data for one station year are contained in a single XML file. The XML file names contain the SEED station name, the year of the data, and the date and time that this data was created. PBO will be updating and adding data to these files on a regular basis. The NCEDC will maintain older copies of the data files, so that in general, you want only the most recent station year file for each station.

These XML borehole and laser strain data files are available at the the following locations, and are organized by year and PBO stationname.

The XML data files are compressed with the "bzip2" program, an open-source file compression program which is freely available in both source and executable format at: http://www.bzip.org/.

Raw strain data

All PBO laser strain and environmental data are also available in the original "Ice9" format. These raw format files are organized by year and station. The file names indicate the year, day of year, the station name and the sampling rate (1s - 1 sample per second or 5 min - 1 sample every 5 minutes).

All PBO borehole strain and environmental data are also available in the original "Bottle" format. These raw format files are organized by year and station.

The raw borehole and laser strain data files are available at the the following locations, and are organized by year and PBO stationname.

What is the format for a PBO Ice-9 file?

What is the format for a PBO bottle file?

For more information on the PBO Strainmeter data, please see the PBO Strainmeter Data Site.

Collaborations

PBO strain data are also available through the IRIS Data Management Center.

PBO is one component of the EarthScope Major Research Initiative funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).