IRIS community?

I can't believe how fast time is flying.  I've been doing alright.  Right now I'm taking 16 units of summer courses (full 10 week quarter !).  They're the pre-reqs for my senior project.

As you all may remember, I'm a civil engineering student that wanted to learn seismology, hoping it would help clear the path to earthquake engineering.

 In my last blog, I said a couple of things.  First I was taking an introductory seismology course, and second my interests are beginning to go more towards environmental engineering.

still blog here or not.  I figured it was that time of the year again where new interns would be meeting up at New Mexico. 

A couple of quick things I wanted to share... AGU was great, my only regret is I didn't meet more people and truly delve into what AGU had to offer (I was only in SF for three days). 

Submitted!

Patches of tremor around the Mendocino Triple Junction
Andrew Tran and Richard Allen
UC Berkeley  

Episodic Tremor and Slip (ETS) has been observed all along the Cascadia Subduction Zone.  Here we focus on Non-Volcanic Tremor (NVT) in the southern part of the Cascadia around the Mendocino Triple Junction.  Continuous data from the Northern California Seismic Network has recently been made available at NCEDC, allowing for a more extensive study of tremor in the Mendocino area.  In this study, data from 56 stations for the January 2006 to June 2007 period was analyzed for tremor using an automated approach similar to that used by Brudzinski and Allen (2007).                   

So I just finished tidying up so leaving is smooth.  I just finished a bit of cataloging the tremor I've processed this summer, and I have to say I really wish I had more time here.  It must be a combination of bad timing with the fieldwork and my own human weaknesses, but it's just gone by so quick.  When people ask me if I've learned a lot, I feel like I have and yet I'm a bit sad because it seems all the other interns have learned so much more.

I've only been up at Berkeley for 4 weeks, 3 weeks were spent in the field, and 2 weeks were spent working from home.

It's sad, I wish I could have contributed a bit more than I feel that I have.  I feel like I know and have done enough to write an abstract and make a poster (after some discussion with Richard tomorrow if he's got the time)... but just... life-wise.  I stayed down in my room most of the time since the whole data request and processing allowed for it.  Once Rob got up here, I was up and around, mingling more with the other housemates, and this place finally felt like a home to me.   

I can't say I've learned a ton about things like gmt, c-shell, and unix in general, but I think I have a very good starting point--I'm much more equipped than I was at the beginning of the summer.  I'm good enough to modify the codes I use accordingly... and just to get around with what I'm doing in general.  This week as I thought about my project I started reading old papers Richard had given me and going back to old things from the beginning of the summer, and it seemed to make so much more sense.  Sometimes I feel like I haven't learned a whole lot, but I must have.

Have I reached my goals?  Well, I do have to say my perspective is much bigger than before, and I do feel like I've refined my thinking a bit.  I'd have to say the bread and butter of this experience was the field work.  It gave me the perspective I needed to make a lot of judgements when I had to analyze the data.  Also, it was just very fun getting to know people and it feels good to be a part of the seismo family.  Furthermore, it was satisfying... the blood, sweat, and the tears... there's just something that feels good about working hard.

Earlier tonight I ventured downtown alone as I have been doing to get dinner.  It felt surreal that this would be my last night doing so.  I went to Steve's BBQ, a Korean BBQ joint.  I got the BBQ chicken, and I must say... it was one of the best meals I had ever had.  I don't know why, I think it's more the appreciation I have than the actual food... after I stepped out, I noticed a couple of vagabonds I had seen earlier at lunch.  They hadn't eaten all day so I treated them out to the same exquisite chicken dinner.  On the way back to the house, I had a chat with a friendly old man named Rosco who just happened to be walking my way.  He used to be a contractor and he had some interesting things to say about EQ engineering.  He was really just a delightful little character.  It's just little moments like those that encourage me and tell me I'm in the right place doing the right thing.

My post must seem like quite a ramble to ya'll... I suppose it's been a long day... I'm gonna miss this place, the people I've met... I still can't believe I'm not going to be a part of this any time soon... Back to undergraduate studies... yippee!

it's nice to have him around!  Wish he were here earlier, his presence is encouraging for some reason.  I feel like we're pretty good friends even though I only just met him out in Redding for our field work.

Well... I had written up a very nice blog but my darn'd laptop somehow decided to take my internet browser back to the last page, thus clearing all I had done =[.

 Well here's the lowdown:

I gave a recap on my project, which is looking at non-volcanic tremor in Mendocino.  Specifically, I looked at 2006 till June of 2007 because the NC short period stations only have continuous data starting in 2006.  I found a lot of would-be noise and other weird seismic signals after I had processed the time series... I correlated them and recorrelated them so it would make more sense.  Not so surprisingly the most clean patches of tremor (part of the goal is to identify patches of tremor) is an event we can clearly see from a nice broadband station.  It goes as follows....

The green dots mean "hey look! it's really tremor!"  The yellow dots are sites that show weak signal or some sort of correlation to the tremor but may or may not be tremor (or at least may not indicate the location of the tremor).  The red means "no way jose, ain't no tremor thar!" and lastly the gray means there's no data for the time of the event. 

The other "correlation" maps I've made show some weird characteristics.  Some events seem to be scattered, while other go down the coast and inland.  Some have very few clear tremor signals but a lot of the maybes.

I guess the interesting thing about seeing all these events (if they're indeed tremor) is that there's a recurrence of about 1-2 months (the conventional idea is about 9-14 months).  Also, the events seem to be much more localized than originally thought.

Anyways, Richard wants me to make a catalogue of the events to try and further "filter" all this processing I've done to see if there are any clear conclusions we can make.

So to end, here's a picture of me pretending to be an airplane (as promised). 

I went with Richard and another undergrad named Spencer.  We took the department's beat up Suburban.  The first day we had 2 hours of traffic caused by an overturned big rig on the bay bridge, and soon thereafter Spencer noticed the battery draining... then we pulled over and he changed out the alternator.  Pretty crazy. 

We had to be up in Eugene by 6 pm... or so we thought... to pickup some fed ex packages... after those delays we thought for sure we wouldn't make it.  However when we got closer, Richard decided to call to confirm the packages are there an found out we had until 7:30 pm to pick them up... It was about 7 pm and we were half an hour away--we made it on the minute.  We celebrated our would-be-failure-turned-success by dining on steak at a roadhouse, oora!

There were all sorts of fun and crazy things happening on this trip, it was a fun experience... almost... like "bonding" (Richard, being English, cringes at the very-American-idiom "bonding experience").  We made friends with a guy named Bob (whose drink made him not-so-reliable, so it seems), stayed at an Indian Casino one night, stayed in a rustic cabin another night, had a gun pulled on us another day... had our frustrations... shook fists at an entity (he is to me since I always hear about him but never see him!) called Mike Brudzinski (at least I did... jokingly at least... for... things... ),I tell ya... it was great.

 Well I need to get back to work!  Almost done looking at some of this tremor stuff x] hahaha.  Hopefully I'll have a nice abstract and the shadow of a poster by this my last week here at Berkeley.

p.s.  Sorry no pics, Richard took most the shots... though I do have some... I will need to wait to get back to my room to post... I hope it makes ya smile =]