The EarthScope Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO) High-rate Real-time Cascadia network

As part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), NSF is investing in onshore-offshore instrumentation to support studies of the Cascadia margin. EarthScope's Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO) is upgrading 232 of its GPS stations in the Pacific Northwest to high-rate sampling and real-time telemetry and providing streaming data from this network to the public for scientific research, education, and hazard monitoring. This effort expands UNAVCO’s real-time GPS operations beyond its original pilot project of 100 stations to include a comprehensive regional network that spans the states of Washington and Oregon, and extends south into California to the Mendocino triple junction. By blanketing the Pacific Northwest with real-time GPS coverage, the NSF is hoping to create a natural laboratory in an area of great scientific interest and high geophysical hazard in order to spur new volcano and earthquake research opportunities. Streaming high-rate data in real-time will enable researchers to routinely analyze for strong ground motion monitoring and earthquake hazards mitigation. At stations with collocated meteorological instruments, met data is being streamed as well, opening the possibility for combined GPS/met processing in real time by the atmospheric community. Funding for field upgrades provide for the installation of 3G capable modems or high speed data radios, as well as for updating the power at each location. Finally, the new funding also expands opportunities for research using high-rate GPS data from a large-aperture network, since 1 Hz streams will be permanently archived and freely available via FTP. PBO deployed new data distribution software in June 2010, to which stations being added soon after field upgrades have been completed. PBO is currently providing 1Hz-streaming data in BINEX, RTCM2.3 and RTCM 3.0 formats via the NTrip protocol, from servers located at UNAVCO headquarters in Boulder, CO. Data latency varies according to the telemetry deployed at each station, but typically ranges from 0.5~2.0 seconds given recent improvements in PBO's real-time streaming capabilities and advances in the communications infrastructure.