DigitSeis: Opportunities for Digitization of Analog Seismograms Through Educators and Citizen Science
Abstract
Prior to the arrival of modern-day digital seismometers, analog instruments recorded ground movement on paper drums mounted on helicorders. The data recorded via these instruments span a century and include records from every continent. Many of these irreplaceable records are still extant and stored by various operators (e.g., universities, research institutions, governments, private sector) around the world. These collections of analog seismograms represent untapped data resources with great potential for both new scientific retrospectives and education. Before these data can be used in any modern style of scientific analyses (e.g., tomography, receiver functions) they must be converted into digital time series. Recent developments in software have brought forth programs that can convert scans of analog seismograms into digital time series. However, no program yet exists that can conduct this conversion in a truly automated sense, and as such, all require some form of human input and verification of results. This necessity for human input and the vast number of analog seismograms provide a great educational opportunity to involve the wider community and generate exposure for seismology and earth science in general. We provide an overview of efforts to employ one of these software, DigitSeis, in conjunction with citizen science and involvement with both high school and undergraduate educators as a resource to provide the human input necessary for the conversion process.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2018
- Bibcode:
- 2018AGUFMED51C0683L
- Keywords:
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- 0805 Elementary and secondary education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0810 Post-secondary education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 0815 Informal education;
- EDUCATIONDE: 7294 Seismic instruments and networks;
- SEISMOLOGY