THE PLATE BOUNDARY OBSERVATORY: DATA MANAGEMENT PLANS AND STATUS

The Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO), part of the larger NSF-funded EarthScope project, is designed to study the three-dimensional strain field resulting from deformation across the active boundary zone between the Pacific and North American plates in the western United States. The science goals of PBO require that plate boundary deformation be adequately characterized over the wide range of spatial and temporal scales common to active continental tectonic processes.

PBO will meet these needs using 875 continuous GPS sites, 175 borehole strainmeter stations, and five laser strainmeters, all installed over the next five years. In addition, 226 existing continuous GPS sites will be incorporated into PBO, and there will be a pool of 100 portable GPS receivers available for survey-mode observations. These stations will provide raw observations from which PBO Analysis Centers will create a wide range of derived data products, including time series of strain and GPS station position, GPS velocity vectors, and regional strain maps. All PBO data and data products will be made available to the community as rapidly and freely as possible through the EarthScope Data Portal.

PBO began operations in September 2003 and the first five new PBO continuous GPS stations were installed in January 2004, with the first PBO borehole strainmeter installations anticipated by January 2005. Data from the first six months of PBO facility operations are now available through the PBO archives at the UNAVCO Facility in Boulder and the Scripps Orbit and Permanent Array Center in San Diego. We will present an update on the current status of, and future plans for, PBO data collection, analysis, and distribution.