Facilities
- Facilities
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The Earth Research Institute is located on campus at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) on the 6th floor of Ellison Hall and in Girvetz Hall. ERI was established in fiscal year 2011 via a merge of the Institute for Crustal Studies and the Institute for Computational Earth System Science. As an organized research unit, ERI is a department-level entity dedicated to supporting extramurally-funded research. Professor Kelly Caylor is the Director and Professor Susannah Porter is the Associate Director of the unit. Seventy-eight independent research groups conduct and administer their research using the facilities and resources of the Institute. ERI partially supports eight administrative employees and three computer system administrators, all from university resources. Several conference rooms are available within Ellison for group meetings and a limited amount of laboratory facilities are available, including ground floor field-staging space within Girvetz. Many ERI investigators use laboratory facilities provided by their home academic departments.
- Conferencing and Room Reservations
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Conference Assistance
Email help@grit.ucsb.edu prior to your meeting or seminar (2-3 days preferred) if you plan to bring your own laptop with your systems specifications (ports, presentation software being used, etc.) so we can assist if necessary.
Reserving Meeting Rooms
Go to this website to book one of the meeting rooms that ERI has available: https://www.eri.ucsb.edu/book-conference-room Note: You will need to request an account before being able to book rooms, please reach out to help@grit.ucsb.edu
ZOOM is available at UCSB
Zoom is a highly functional conferencing platform that can be used on a variety of devices, including handheld. To get familiar with Zoom, please see the ETS page on using Zoom: http://www.ets.ucsb.edu/services/video-conferencing
To access the Zoom portal directly: http://ucsb.zoom.us/ and set up a meeting, host a meeting, etc.
6818 - John Crowell Library - Meeting Room
Area: ~160 sq ft.
Chalkboard
Seating: 8 at table;
Conferencing Capabilities:
6840 - Ray Smith Library - Large Meeting Room
Area: ~320 sq ft.
70" HD LED/LCD Monitor; 4 HDMI inputs, digital adapters available: HDMI to displayport, mini-displayport, USB-C, DVI (VGA is not supported)
Seating: 10 at tables; 6 along outside wall (with room for about 4 more)
Conferencing Capabilities:- HDMI1 - connected to Mac Mini
- HDMI2 - HDMI cable terminated at table for laptop/handheld devices
6824 - ERI Main Seminar Room - Large Conference Room
Area: ~560 sq ft.
90" HD LED/LCD Monitor; 4 HDMI inputs, digital adapters available: HDMI to displayport, mini-displayport, USB-C, DVI (VGA is not supported)
Seating: 20 at tables; 12 along back wall
Conferencing Capabilities:- HDMI1 - connected to Mac Mini in Lectern
- HDMI2 - HDMI cable terminated at Lectern for laptop/handheld devices
- Aspect ratio is 16:9, 1920 x 1080 resolution
- USB Logitech Camera mount on Display
The following devices also available for use:
- Owl video conference camera
- Jabra conference speaker, USB
- Flexible mini-tripod for podium/table useUSB Logitech Camera mount on TV
- USB Logitech Camera for mini-tripod
- Pointer (laser pointers incompatible with LED Monitor)
Presenters in the room use a Zoom account on the device chosen for presenting; either the in-house Mac Mini or a personal device.
Advance testing of room for conferences strongly suggested, email help@grit.ucsb.edu for advance testing with IT team. Non-standard A/V configurations in the conference room are not supported by the GRIT Team. Instructional Development on campus be available for non-standard set up on a recharge basis: https://id.ucsb.edu/index.php/av-installation/overview
- Seismic Observatories
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Data Centers
Earthquake Engineering Group (EEG) Data Center
The geotehnical array data portal, maintained at ERI, receives data streams from several remote field sites (more information in the section below). These sites, equipped with seismic sensors for monitoring ground shaking, pressure sensors for monitoring liquefaction, and video telepresence cameras, deliver their data via secure VPN routers connecting the radio-based wireless field network to the local ERI network servers. The data portal server provides researchers worldwide with access to the earthquake data via web-based search and download access (www.nees.ucsb.edu/data-portal). The real-time streaming data is also forwarded on to other regional seismic monitoring networks and national data centers.
Instrumentation and Seismic Observatories Programs at ERI
ERI is home to significant instrumentation and research efforts focused on understanding the physics of the earthquake process and the effects of earthquakes on the built environment. These require not only computational facilities for doing theoretical modeling of wave propagation and earthquake source process simulation, but also field observatories for monitoring earthquake activity. These field observatories provide the control data for testing our theoretical models and simulation techniques in order to allow us to determine if our models are matching real observations of earthquakes.
ERI operates a number of field facilities for monitoring earthquakes. The cost of installing and operating both portable instrumentation and permanent field sites can be quite high, so these costs are shared by many funding agencies. Currently, the largest field monitoring program at ERI is supported through the support from Pacific Gas & Electric Corporation (PG&E) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS). This program was previously funded through the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and prior to that from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Directorate's George E. Brown Jr., Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) program. Support from NSF's Earth Sciences directorate and the U.S. Geological Survey through the Southern California Earthquake Center provide support for the Portable Broadband Instrument Center (PBIC) and the Borehole Instrumentation Program. These combined resources as well as local institutional resources and in-kind support from other agencies are used to maintain the overall instrumentation and seismic observatories program at ERI.
Portable Broadband Instrument Center
The Portable Broadband Instrument Center (PBIC) was established in 1991 by the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) to provide researchers in southern California with year-round access to a "pool" of portable seismic recording equipment. The PBIC maintains this equipment and also serves as a Rapid Array Mobilization Program (RAMP) facility in the event of significant earthquakes. At other times PBIC equipment is used on projects related to SCEC science and data gathering goals. The PBIC is managed out of ERI by Principal Investigator Jamie Steidl.
The first generation of data recorders maintained by the PBIC were primarily Refraction Technology (RefTek) 16 and 24 bit data acquisition systems (DAS's). These have now beind phased out and are slowly being replaced with modern network aware 24-bit Quanterra Q330 and Kinemetrics Rock Platform DAS's. Sensors consist of high output short period velocity transducers to record very small ground motion, force balance accelerometers designed to stay on-scale (up to +-2G) for the strong ground motion expected from very large earthquakes, and intermediate period weak motion sensors that provide increased frequency bandwidth to allow better investigation of deep basins and teleseismic or global earthquake monitoring. A broad dynamic range of recording is obtained by pairing both weak motion and strong motion sensors with a single DAS.
As we bring online the next generation dataloggers, the combination of these new dataloggers and sensors allows recording from as low as M1 earthquakes all the way to M8+ earthquakes on scale. In addition, these stations have the capability to stream the data continuously back to UCSB and the regional monitoring networks in real-time. The data is then integrated into the network processing routines, used for locating earthquakes, calculating magnitudes, and producing shake maps for emergency response for the larger events. Then the data is archived along with the permanent network data and made accessible through the regional data centers.
Geotechnical Array Monitoring
Permanently instrumented field sites for geotechnical array monitoring represent one of the major focuses of the EEG at UCSB. The overarching goal of the this field site monitoring program is to improve on our ability to generate analytical and empirical models for accurate simulation of how the ground responds and deforms when shaken by earthquakes and to understand how this seismically induced shaking affects building structures and foundations. Two complimentary approaches have been developed: Continuous monitoring of natural earthquakes with down-hole seismometers and pore pressure transducers, and the use of large "mobile shakers" to allow active shaking of both structures and the nearby ground during controlled experiments.
The Garner Valley field site:
The Garner Valley Downhole Array (GVDA) is a field site located in a seismically active region of California, 7 km from the San Jacinto fault and 35 km from the San Andreas fault. The site is situated in a narrow valley within the Peninsular Ranges Batholith 23 km east of Hemet and 20km southwest of Palm Springs, California. A one-story soil-foundation structure-interaction (SFSI) structure was constructed at the site for the study of dynamic response of this structure during earthquakes. The site has been thoroughly characterized through borehole geotechnical tests and in other studies over the last 25 years. Instrumentation of the GVDA site began in 1989 and has continued to expand in scope since the initial installation.
The near-surface stratigraphy beneath GVDA consists of 18-25 m of lake-bed alluvium. Soil types present are silty sand, sand, clayey sand, and silty gravel. The alluvium gradually transitions into decomposed granite in the depth interval between 18 m to 25m. Decomposed granite consisting of gravely sand exists between 25 and 88 meters. At ~88 meters the contact with granodiorite of the Southern California Peninsular Ranges batholith is reached.
The Garner Valley site is very well suited to the study of soil-foundation-structure interaction and liquefaction. The area is located near several active faults on low density alluvial soil with a near surface water table. The water table fluctuates at the GVDA site depending on the season and rainfall totals. In the wetter years the water table is at, or just below the surface in the winter and spring months. In the summer and fall months, or the entire dry years, the water table drops to 1 to 3 meters below the surface. Pressure transducers within the liquefiable sediments, and accelerometers at the surface and at various depths within the soil column and in the bedrock below are all monitored continuously in real-time, and the data archived both locally on-site and at UCSB. Over 6,000 Magnitude 1 and larger earthquakes have beed observed at the GVDA facility since 1989. Data from the GVDA site can be found at the UCSB data portal (www.nees.ucsb.edu/data-portal).
The Garner Valley Soil-Foundation-Structure Interaction (SFSI) test facility is composed of a medium-scale reconfigurable steel-frame structure founded on a rigid, massive concrete slab on grade. Shakers can be mounted on the roof for active experiments to complement passive earthquake monitoring. The test structure is densely instrumented and also monitored continuously in real-time.
The Wildlife Liquefaction Array field site:
The Wildlife Liquefaction Array (WLA) is a ground motion monitoring and liquefaction research site. Located at the southern most terminus of the San Andreas Fault system, the WLA field site records multiple earthquakes daily in this seismically active area. WLA is situated in California's Imperial Valley on the west bank of the Alamo River 13 km due north of Brawley, California and 160 km due east of San Diego. Records from WLA provide essential information to scientists who study ground response, ground failure, and liquefaction. Predicting these effects using computer models requires instrumented field sites to validate the simulation methods against real observations. Instrumentation of the site began in 1982 by the US geological Survey, was upgraded in 2004 through the NEES program, and monitoring and data analysis continues today through support from the US NRC.
The near-surface geology of the WLA site consists of a 2.5 to 3.0m thick layer of silty clay to clayey silt caps the site. This layer is underlain by a 3.5 to 4.0m thick granular layer composed of silt, silty sand, and sandy silt. The granular layer is underlain by a thick layer of silty clay to clay.
The confined silty sand layer, from approximately 3 - 7 m, is highly susceptible to increases in pore pressure and potential liquefaction and a major reason for selecting this site for instrumentation Six events in the past 75 years have generated liquefaction effects within 10 km of the WLA site. Researchers are using earthquakes that occur on a daily basis near this site, as well as active testing using mobile shakers, to try and better understand how near-surface geologic conditions affect ground shaking.
Like the GVDA site, pressure transducers within the liquefiable sediments, and accelerometers at the surface and at various depths within the soil column down to 100 meters depth are all monitored continuously in real-time, and the data archived both locally on-site and at UCSB. Over 9,000 Magnitude 1 and larger earthquakes have beed observed at the GVDA facility since 2004, when the NEES program began. Data from the WLA site can be found at the UCSB data portal (www.nees.ucsb.edu/data-portal).
The Borrego Valley Downhole Array:
In 1993, Kajima Engineering and Construction Corp. and Agbabian Associates established the Borrego Valley downhole array (BVDA) near Borrego Springs, in Southern California. In this array there are four borehole instruments extending to depths of 9, 19, 139 and 238 m. In addition, BVDA has ~10 surface instruments extending in two directions across the Borrego Valley, and a remote rock site at the edge of the valley that includes surface and borehole sensors. At the main station data acquisition systems building the shear wave velocity gently increases from about 300 m/s at the surface to 750 m/s at 230 m-the granite interface-where it jumps to 2500 m/s. The water table is at ~92 m; BVDA is representative of a dry site in NEHRP site class C.
The BVDA site is complementary to the NEES facilities in that it represents a different soil condition (dry vs. wet) and slightly stiffer material properties. It is important to collect data from all of the soil conditions encountered in the built environment in order to test our simulation methods using different soil models. Data from the BVDA site can be found at the UCSB data portal (www.nees.ucsb.edu/data-portal).
The Hollister Earthquake Observatory:
Agbabian Associates installed the Hollister Earthquake Observatory (HEO) in 1991 with funding from the Kajima Engineering and Construction Corporation. Kajima Corporation donated this array to the University of California, Santa Barbara in January 1998. It is located in the Salinas Valley where alluvium overlies Tertiary sandstone overlying Granitic basement. HEO has been operating since early 1992, and is located about 10 kilometers from the San Andreas Fault near the cities of Hollister and Salinas in central California. The ground motion array consists of a vertical array of six accelerometers in Quaternary alluvium, and three accelerometers installed at a remote rock station, 3 km to the Northeast. At the HEO main soil station accelerometers are located at 192, 110, 50, 20, 10, and 0 meters depth, going from crystalline rock at the bottom, up through consolidated and unconsolidated alluvium to the surface. Three sensor locations, surface Sandstone, surface Granite, and GL-53 meter borehole Granite are instrumented at the remote rock station. The location of HEO along the San Andreas Fault in Central/Northern California makes it an important addition to UCSB's seismological monitoring field site programs. Data from the HEO site can be found at the UCSB data portal (www.nees.ucsb.edu/data-portal).
The SCEC Borehole Instrumentation Program:
The Southern California Earthquake Center, with funding from the USGS and NSF, has supported the instrumentation and maintenance of borehole and surface instruments at locations throughout southern California for the past two decades. These stations are collaborative with the regional networks, and typically include just a surface and single borehole sensor, with the data streaming directly to the regional networks, and archived at the Southern California Earthquake Data Center (www.data.scec.org). The borehole network consists of 18 stations funded through cost sharing between SCEC and EarthScope, CGS, USGS/Caltech, Caltrans, and the NRC. The instrumentation is used to gain a better understanding of the near-surface effects on ground motions, to improve our ability to account for these effects in simulations of ground motion, and to get a more detailed observation of the earthquake source by avoiding the near-surface layers that typically attenuate high-frequency radiation. Recently we have begun to integrate the data from these borehole stations into the geotechnical array data portal (www.nees.ucsb.edu/data-portal).
- Other
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AVHRR Receiver Facility
ERI maintains a Terascan receiver and data archive at UCSB. Data is collected daily from overhead satellite passes, contains raw satellite pass data dating from September, 1993, to the present and is an important source of current and historical remote sensor observations of the west coast of the United States.
Optical Calibration Facility
Optical signals--whether obtained at ocean depths, in glacier ice, on the Earth's surface, from the atmosphere, or in space--are a key component of our scientific observations. We have developed a number of unique optical instruments (e.g., in-water UV and visible spectroradiometers) for our various research efforts. Sensitive calibration of these optical sensors is essential to ensure high quality and reliable data and we have developed a state-of-the-art optical calibration facility.
Micro-Environmental Imaging & Analysis Facility (MEIAF)
This state-of-the-art imaging facility for research features an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) with energy dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDS), scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) detector, and a cryostage, together enabling high-resolution imaging of hydrated specimens, observation of dynamic experiments such as crystal formation and dehydration, freeze-fracturing, and ultra-low temperature imaging. Applications range from microelectronics to forensic science to assessing inorganic nanomaterials interactions with biological tissues. The facility is located in the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, staffed by a trained development engineer for training users and operating instrumentation, operated on a recharge basis, and managed by ERI.
CRREL UCSB Eastern Sierra Snow Study Site (CUES)
Location: Mammoth Mountain, CA - eastern Sierra NevadaSite and Instrumentation:A complex system of sensors and automatic data logging devices monitor snow and energy budget conditions at a cooperative site midway up Mammoth Mountain (37 deg. 37 min. N, 119 deg. 2 min. W) at about 2940 meters (9645 feet) in the eastern Sierra Nevada of California. Researchers and research staff also make a variety of manual measurements at the site, which has operated at the current location in Mammoth Mountain Ski Area since 1987. The site lies well out of the way of ski area operation and recreational ski traffic so that the snow remains undisturbed from accumulation through melting. The site's position, on the east side of the Sierra crest near the headwaters of the San Joaquin River, makes environmental conditions sensitive to different types of storms, which typically result in an enormous amount of precipitation and severe winds. These weather conditions, along with ease of winter access via the ski area, make this an ideal spot for monitoring alpine snow. Measurements include meteorological variables that affect energy transfer over the snow and its mass balance, snow properties as the pack evolves during the snow season and conditions in the soil under the snow cover. The participants in snow research and weather monitoring at the site include the University of California, Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management; the U.S. Army's Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory (CRREL); the University of California's Sierra Nevada Aquatic Research Laboratory (SNARL); and Mammoth Mountain Ski Area (MMSA).The cooperative research site provides an excellent base of activities extending over the area of Mammoth Mountain and the Sierra region. Instrumentation at the site includes radiometers for measuring incoming and outgoing radiation; sensors for measuring air temperature, relative humidity and wind speed and direction; tipping-bucket gauges for measuring precipitation; temperature sensors at various depths in the soil and snowpack; soil moisture sensors at various depths; and snowmelt lysimeters, multiple snow depth sensors, LiDAR scans of the site every 15 minutes, 3D sonic anemometer sampling at 10hz, and an 8'x10' snow pillow. Also a camera points at the suite of radiometers and other instruments hourly in order to monitor their condition remotely. A Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera (MASC) takes 9 to 37 micron resolution stereographic photographs of hydrometeors from three angles while simultaneously measureing fallspeed. The cameras are triggered by a vertically stacked bank of IR motion sensors sensitive to snowflake sizes ranging from .001cm to 3cm and fallspeed is derived from successive triggers along the fallpath. The site also continues to offer a superb resource for visiting researchers and for field classes studying snow science or snow hydrology.CUES database:Measurements from dataloggers at the site are sent to a server at UCSB. The raw files are ingested into a relational database, which can be accessed from the web. Details on this process are available at: http://www.snow.ucsb.edu/cues/database_ingest_process.htmlResource Center for SPOT Imagery
In June of 2005, a program was launched to allow UCSB faculty, researchers, and students unlimited access to high spatial resolution commercial satellite imagery from the SPOT constellation of satellite sensors. These data are commercial products and have previously been inaccessible to academic researchers due to their high cost. During the period of the program (lasting until May of 2008), UCSB was able to task the SPOT satellites in areas of scientific interest and impact, such as the LTER sites. In all, we archived over 70,000 scenes, occupying over 16 Terabytes, with a retail value of over $241-million. Faculty, researchers, and students in Geography, Earth Science, the Donald Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, Marine Science Institute, Environmental Studies, the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), and the former Crustal Studies and ICESS (now ERI), have utilized the satellite images (both archive and newly tasked). These data remain available to UCSB members.
