INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENTS FOR GEODYNAMICS RESEARCH IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS

Some recent research at UNAVCO and the University of Colorado has been focused on Rocky Mountain tectonics, and Information Technology in the areas of data visualization and distributed data serving. At UNAVCO, we are participating in the geodynamics work in the Rocky Mountain Testbed of the GEON NSF Information Technology Research project. As part of this work, a variety of seismic tomography models, GPS velocity vector data, strain rate models and other data have been incorporated into the Integrated Data Viewer (IDV). The IDV is an open-source visualization and analysis tool developed by UCAR that has several exciting capabilities such as online collaboration, and a variety of 1-d, 2-d and 3-d viewing options. The collected data sets are being served on a platform-independent distributed data service called OPeNDAP. Through this system, self-describing data is easily accessible to a wide audience and fosters sharing in the earth sciences. Testing such systems now allows us to be more prepared for the volumes of data anticipated from various Earthscope projects.

As part of the scientific research for GEON, we have also begun investigations into quantifying Colorado seismicity. The Rocky Mountain Front IRIS/PASSCAL seismic experiment recorded many local events that previously had not been examined. We have begun to locate these events and are working to create focal mechanisms, a seismic hazard map, and calculations of stress drop for this region. New IT capabilities will help augment the quality of this work through sharing the data with a larger audience and providing a means to view and analyze integrated data.