Virginia Tech and collaborators have funding from NSF and the USGS to acquire and interpret a large refraction and reflection survey in the Salton Trough in southern California.  This survey is currently scheduled for data acquisition in December 2009 – January 2010, and initial scouting and permitting is under way.  The project and its goals are described briefly at:  http://www.geophys.geos.vt.edu/hole/salton/

In order to prepare for this project, we are currently looking at archival seismic data in the Imperial Valley, the southern part of the Salton Trough.  In the 1970’s and early 1980’s, oil companies acquired seismic reflection profiles to assess hydrocarbon potential in the basins.  Some of these data were released to CALCRUST, an academic consortium, and were the result of Lupe Severson’s 1986 M.S. thesis at U. C.  Berkeley.  The digital data are still available, but we are at this point unsure about the pre-stack data.  In addition, the USGS acquired a series of refraction lines in the late 1970’s to assess sedimentary basin structure, resulting in a series of papers by Gary Fuis and colleagues (Fuis is a collaborator on the new project).  These data are available at the IRIS DMC.  Finally, an early 1990’s crustal-scale project across the Basin and Range ended within the Imperial Valley, and acquired lower-resolution images of the entire crust.  These data will be available.  Combined, these data used a wide range of seismic shot sizes, which will allow us to assess shot coupling and the distance to which shots of a given size may be recorded.  In addition, modern processing and analysis methods may be able to improve the images and interpretations from the 1970’s data.

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