Mairi's blog

I'm glad the new interns started posting to remind us about this blog and update each other about what we're doing. Amazingly, both Kristen and I got accepted to an internship at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston this summer, which neither of us knew the other was applying for. So we will get to see each other for another summer! Anyway, I hope everyone has fun plans for the summer, and I wish luck to everyone who's going on to grad school this year.

So, now I'm back at Rice, and theoretically done with my summer project. I'm sorry it took so long to get this update posted, but I'm sure you understand how it is with school starting and all that fun stuff. It was good to have a three day weekend, but I can't help but feel that I didn't really accomplish any of the many things I was supposed to do. Oh well, that's why there's always tomorrow.

Anyway, of course this isn't actually the end, as my title suggests. For one thing, I still have to make my poster for AGU, and that will require further analyzing and thinking about everything I did over the summer. I have the abstract and most of the data put together, but I still need to make sure I can explain it properly, and get it laid out in a coherent manner on the poster.

And of course, I will take away much more from this summer than just fond memories. I got to see Alaska and have fun, which is always important, but I also got to learn a lot about things I might be doing in the future and after I graduate. I had a great deal of fun with the fieldwork, and I think it was helpful for me when analyzing the data to know where it all came from. Looking back at my goals from the beginning of the summer, I see that I wanted to become more comfortable using computers to process data. I spent a lot of time using UNIX and running programs on real data, and although I certainly don’t know all the ins and outs of computer analysis, I have certainly improved my abilities, and look forward with confidence to learning new things in the future.

So on the whole, I would have to say that the summer was a rousing success. Have I completely decided whether I want to go into seismology after I graduate? Well, no, but I’m a natural procrastinator, and I still have plenty of time to figure all that stuff out! What the summer did do, was to clarify what I can expect in graduate school, and give me a taste of what a particular field is like. Maybe I will try something different next summer, and when the time comes, I will have learned enough to make a wise choice for myself. Or maybe not.

Anyway, this adventure may be coming to a close, but it will still be with me when I embark on the next one. That’s what life is about, right? Ever onward, never back!

We haven’t seen any actual bears on this trip south, but we have seen lots of evidence of them.  Two days ago we took a boat into the Prince William Sound to check on some of our stations that we had installed in June, and also to put out some new ones.  The first few we visited were fine, but then we came to one where the lid was removed, the instruments pulled out, and one of the batteries carried off into the woods.  Because the lid was off, the station was full of water and the batteries were destroyed.  Fortunately the other equipment was ok, and the vault with the seismometer hadn’t even been opened, so we were able to repair it with a set of batteries we had been planning to use at one of the other stations.  Upon examining the area, we found what appeared to be a bear cave fairly near to the site, so we can only hope that it doesn’t get trashed again. 

At the next site we visited, we saw a familiar and chilling sight.  The box had been opened, and the equipment was sitting on the ground next to it.  But at this station we saw another amazing thing: lights!  That’s right, despite being opened by a bear, this station was still running.  (We know it was a bear because of the teeth marks in the box; otherwise I would have thought it was a human because everything was so neat.)  There was water in the box, but it hadn’t yet reached the level where it could get into the batteries and ruin them.  Working very carefully, we were able to clean everything off, and get it all running again.  This was a good thing, because we didn’t have any spare sets of batteries.

So I only have a week left before I will leave Alaska.  I will miss digging holes and putting the instruments in the ground.  I won’t miss the long hours of driving (at least the scenery is pretty) or the stupid instruments that just seem not to want to work.  I will miss the feeling of accomplishment when I finally was able to put all the seismic data I was working on in Fairbanks into a map that told a story about the land.  I won’t miss the long hours when I would stare at the computer screen and none of the data would seem to be any good.  I’ll miss the friends I have made and the great wilderness of Alaska, but I won’t have to miss it forever.  One day I will hopefully come back to see it all again, and to remember everything I’ve done in this great summer.

I’ll make at least one more post before I leave, reflecting on what I’ve done and such, but for now I have to go install more seismic stations!  Yay!

That is the official state motto of Alaska, and in the past several days I have been learning just how far north that can be.  Going north out of Fairbanks there is one road, and after the first few miles, it has no side roads.  For 500 miles this road, which is only paved in a few places, took us north to remove all the stations that had been part of the temporary ARCTIC array.  These were the stations that had gathered the data that I had been working on all summer; now instead of points on a screen they were real places, separated by hours of driving on a bumpy road.  It was fun to see the actual stations I have been looking at, but also a bit sad to know that now they are gone forever.

Some of the things we passed on our way north:

The Alaska Pipeline

This was a constant companion on our way north; the road was only built to allow the construction of the pipeline.  Sometimes it crossed under the road to the other side, but it was always there, running alongside us.

The Arctic Circle

Where’s the line on the ground to mark where it is?

The Brooks Range

A really amazing mountain range, with a really amazing amount of mosquitoes.

The farthest-north spruce tree

After this, it is impossible for trees to grow, and so we are truly out in the Arctic tundra.  Several years ago, some idiot with an axe decided to murder the tree by chopping off some of its bark, so as you can see, it is slowly dying. 

Prudhoe Bay!

Well, we didn’t actually pass this, because this is where the road ends.  It’s an oil drilling station, so it’s not exactly the most beautiful place around, but it’s still fascinating to be so far north.  The Arctic Ocean was only a few miles away, but access is restricted to tour groups and oil people, and we didn’t have time to take a tour.  Still, it’s likely the farthest north I’ll ever get, and farther north than most people make it.  Now I just need to get to Antarctica to see the other extreme!

The beautiful scenery

The farthest-north gas station

The road home

Now I am back in Fairbanks for a few days before we leave for Seward again, to install the rest of the 34 seismic stations we will be placing in southern Alaska.  We are going to do a huddle test here in Fairbanks before taking the equipment down to Seward to deploy, as we did at the beginning of the summer.  The equipment we will be using is the same equipment we just took out from the ARCTIC experiment, so we will have to make sure that it still works after several years in the field.

In the meantime, I am continuing to work on my poster for AGU, and to interpret the data I spent the summer gathering and processing.  The easiest way to look at the data is with a map that shows the fast direction and splitting time for each event at the various stations.  The length of each line shows the splitting time, and the orientation shows the fast direction.

 

As you can see, for the most part the splitting directions are pretty consistent along the line of stations.  Nome is different, and there is one station in the Brooks Range that is anomalous, but these results seem to indicate a fairly uniform mantle fabric underneath northern Alaska.  S-wave splitting is thought to reflect the flow of the mantle, so it is interesting that the fast direction is in about the same direction as most of the major faults in Alaska.  Anyway, I still need to discuss it more to make sure I really understand it, but for the most part the analysis is done, and the rest is presentation and interpretation.

Just over two weeks, and I will be heading back to Houston!  It’s going to be a real shock after the nice cool weather we’ve been having up here, and I will miss the amazing expanses of wilderness in Alaska.  Oh well, I will just have to find somewhere fun to go next summer, too.

Yay pictures!