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GPS To Monitor/Predict Seismic Stresses

Posted by timothy on from the tracking-creeps-in-california dept.

webNazi points to this story at CNET, writing: "With over 250 GPS monitoring stations installed over the last ten years, the monitoring stations will provide continuous data--for 50 years or more--about otherwise imperceptible shifts in the Earth's crust. The network is so precise it can record as little as 0.04 inches of distortion of the ground or movement along a fault."

3 of 5 comments (clear)

  1. Cool, but what about my GPS by squeegee-me · · Score: 2

    I'm still looking for a GPS that will have that kind of accuracy. The Military has it, but they also have the access codes that change something like 10,000 times a second and map downfeeds to the units. I also know Farmers found a work arround that includes one stationary unit that ties into a computer to tell the other unit(s) that no you did not just move 10.342841 meters to the north, so don't turn the grain harvister yet. But what about me?

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    Who wants Pork Chops?
  2. Details... by RareHeintz · · Score: 2
    The article was a little light on technical details. Does anyone know if they were using interferometric GPS or what? I know that was supposed to get down to ~2mm resolution...

    OK,
    - B
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    http://www.bradheintz.com/
    - updated
  3. SuomiNet by MarkMac · · Score: 2
    Another closely related project (in fact I think they share GPS groundstation receivers with the Southern California geodetic folks) is SuomiNet

    http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/suominet/
    http://www.unavco.ucar.edu/equipment/suominet/

    SuomiNet is a national network of GPS receivers, located primarily at universities, configured and managed to generate near real-time estimates of precipitable water vapor in the atmosphere, total electron content in the ionosphere, and other meteorological and geodetic information.

    Example use of this data can be found at:
    http://www.gst.ucar.edu/gpsrg/realtime.html

    Neat stuff! Now if only the data from these fixed GPS sites were easily available via the web ...