I seen erik had written about what he's up to now as a result of our IRIS internship last summer, so i thought i would update as well.  Due to some paper work issues with the GRE folks timing wasn't on my side for graduate school until it was time for decisions, which is unfortunate but I still may get in this fall depending on proposal approvals.  Aside from that, i'm still up to great things.  From our IRIS orientation and the AGU conference I have arranged to work with Francis Wu this summer doing passive seismology.  I'm scheduled to head to Taiwan Thursday May 1st for a few weeks deploying and retrieving Ocean Bottom Seismometers.  After that i will be in New York at binghamton university working on a project not yet set up, but likely involving seismic data to better understand the Taiwan orogeny. Good luck to this years interns!

 -Shane

I've been pretty busy lately processing the data we collected in Washington. So far i've gone through and removed the bad shots (data with trains, people walking, late triggers), and the dead channels (the geophones that recorded nothing, or were disconnected). I've just completed the first cut on the velocity analysis and when my advisor gets back in town we'll have our lines stacked and ready for interpretation. Aside from processing i've been making a compilation of other techniques used in the area, i.e. gravity, magnetics. With these techniques and ours we will have a better understanding of why we see what we see.

One interesting thing we came across already is our initial results don't agree with what we expected. We had thought our survey lines would be crossing through the tacoma basin, which given the location should of had a southward dip. Instead, our geology is dipping to the north... Interesting. Data from magnetics and gravity suggest that there is yet another basin in the area (current basins are the tacoma, and seattle). This basin is suggested in only a small paragraph in a single paper, yet appears to really be there.

Another discovery we hope to gain insight on is if the tacoma fault connects up with the white river fault (currently believed to be 2 seperate faults). If these 2 faults are actually joined the earthquake hazard jumps significantly. The current tacoma fault is capable of a magnitude 6 earthquake, but if it does extend into the white river fault, it has the power to produce a magnitude 8! I've included 2 images. One image is of the washington area we surveyd, the other is of the basins I was talking about.

The red lines are land surveys, yellow lines are marine surveys. The blue lines are from industry data,

and our data comes from the puyallup, sumner transect, and interurban transect. A total of 26km!!

The underlying map is a tomography map, the only indication of the muckleshoot basin. As you can see our

survey lines cross the boundary. In the lower right box, there is a map of the geology in that section. Within this

area is the white river fault. Just above the tacoma basin is the tacoma fault. The known path stops just past the tacoma

basin. Does this connect with the white river fault.... We hope to find out.

I've finally got the video uploaded and found some pics of our field work to show... What you don't see however is the people I had to talk to. I say had as though its negative, but i'll explain. We ran several transects through urban areas, and the weight drop hits the ground with a good thump. It was awkward in a way, as the first day we were doing our survey in the urban areas it seemed was where all the cranky people lived lol. I had people come up to me saying "what the f*** are you doing, you're knocking sh*t off the walls." Thank goodness not all people are like that. For the most part everyone was very interested in what we were doing, and was really nice.

Below you'll see several images, one is of Mt. St. Helens, which was awesome. Back in 1980 on May 18th, this volcano gave quite an eruption, and it was cool to sit there and think what that thing is capable of. The other photo is the weight drop we used as our source. It has hydralics that raise the 500lbs of steel and has a roller wheel that drops the weight of the hook. To get even more power out of the source, we have a large rubber band wrapped over the weight to accelerate the dropping force, and it really does make a huge difference.

If you want to know how we collect data in the field, and how we have fun doing it, check out the video :o).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0kCKaPWbdg

I've just made it back from field work. We were staying in Puyallup Washington (which i refer to as the car dealership capitol of the world haha). It was an awesome experience, I learned alot about collecting seismic reflection data, and had a blast doing it. On the same note, it was also very challenging at times. Working every single day for 20 some days at 10 + hrs a day starts to take its toll on you. The people i worked with in the field couldn't have been better (for the most part) and a typical day ended with a celebrating beer. I'm not sure who all has seen Mt. ranier but its amazing, and i was forced to look at it every day... ruff lol. I've taken lots of photos and even video of what it was like to work in the field and will make a picture blog soon as i can edit them.

My project is still unclear but it will be unfolding very soon. The reason its unclear is we simply don't know what we are going to find, although we have several hypothesis. Its likely going to be showcasing some of the big faults that we find, or I might be making and Isopach map of the Quaternary/Tertiary boundary of the entire washington region. I will update as i learn more in the coming days.

Its great to be back in Boise and I'm looking forward to reading about what everyone has been up to.

Well its the 4th of july and I had the day off and it was a pretty fun day. Me and some people from work went rafting down the Boise river which as some minor rapids with a few really big drops. I'll definatly be renting a kayak and trying my skills several times this summer. For the rest of the day (only a few hours) i'm going to check out the fireworks show, which is in the park i'm staying by.

What i've been doing this week is checking all our equipment and doing alot of wiring. One thing i've learned so far is that seismic reflection isn't something everyone does, which means alot of the equipment is homemade. I'll post pictures with explanations when i get a chance. Now were off to Tacoma, Washington (tomarrow) where were going to be running several seismic transects. What were looking for is to be able to identify the faults in the tacoma fault zone east of Puget Sound. The faults are already identified west of Puget Sound. I still have reading to do to understand the real significance of this, but it has something to do with the tectonics in the region, and the area of interest being part of a monocline brings question to how the faults are structured. Our field work beings friday july 6 to no later than july 28.

I thought some might be interested to see what Boise looks like... Now these aren't all of Boise, but this is mostly what I see everyday when I go rollerblading.