All-day short course: 8:00 am – 5:00 pm Mountain Time (UTC-6:00)

Presenters: Eric Lindsey (University of New Mexico), Ann Jingyi Chen (University of Texas Austin), Kang Wang (EarthScope Consortium)

Description:
The expansion of cloud-based routine processing efforts accompanying the Sentinel-1 mission, and in anticipation of the forthcoming NISAR mission, have dramatically expanded the volume of processed InSAR data in the public domain, providing access to user-friendly InSAR data products. In this full-day short course, we will focus on how to analyze and interpret InSAR data products acquired from modern radar satellites.

Audience: graduate students and researchers interested in learning about the fundamentals of InSAR.

Participants will need internet access to attend the course via zoom, and a Google/gmail account to use the Google Colab notebooks. No other preparatory work will be needed.

Goals:
Participants will learn about:

InSAR background theory and processing methods

Common data errors and issues

The range of SAR satellite missions and data repositories

Time series analysis, data interpretation, and ingesting data into modeling efforts

This short course is already fully subscribed. No additional attendees will be admitted.

Half-day short course: 10:00 am – 2:00 pm Mountain Time (UTC-6:00)

Presenters: Maurizio Battaglia (USGS), D. Sarah Stamps (Virginia Tech), Ntambila Daud (Virginia Tech)

Description:
dMODELS, an open-source MATLAB software suite developed by the U.S. Geological Survey, streamlines the analysis of deformation measurements related to faults and active volcanic centers. This comprehensive toolkit supports the entire workflow of deformation analysis, including preprocessing, inversion, and post-processing. It specializes in applying analytical deformation models for interpreting data from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR), and tiltmeters. dMODELS offers a variety of source models, encompassing pressurized spherical, ellipsoidal, and sill-like magma sources, and dislocations, within a uniform, elastic half-space environment. The software is user-friendly and can be conveniently operated on a laptop. Its accuracy is assured, as both the inversion and forward models have been rigorously validated using Finite Element Method (FEM) models. It is designed to benefit both students and scientists involved in deformation data analysis.

Goals:
Participants will develop expertise in both modeling and interpreting results derived from deformation data analysis.

Half-day short course: 9:00 am – 1:00 pm Mountain Time (UTC-6:00)

Presenters: Mike Grilliot, Andrew Lyda, Jaq Zdebski, and Julia Hutchins (University of Washington)

Description:
The Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) RAPID Facility, supported by the National Science Foundation, offers tools and instrumentation to collect perishable field data related to natural hazards and disaster events. This short course will give attendees a comprehensive understanding of the RAPID Facility, its instruments and capabilities, and provide an introduction to field reconnaissance planning, as well as data archiving in collaboration with the NHERI DesignSafe repository. An overview of instrumentation and their respective resolutions and capabilities, practicalities of working with the RAPID Facility, field mission planning, and examples of successful deployment and resulting data products will be covered. The RAPID instrumentation portfolio includes a fleet of drones, multiple terrestrial laser scanners, a hydrographic survey vessel, seismometer and accelerometer arrays, Street view imaging systems, and public and environmental health sensors.

Goals:
1. Overview of the facility, 

2. Understanding of the Instrumentation portfolio, and 

3. The practicalities of how to work with and access these shared use instrumentation resources.

Half-day short course: 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm Mountain Time (UTC-6:00)

Presenters: Scott Johnson and Emily Zawacki (EarthScope Consortium)

Description:
Are you a student or early career professional interested in science communication? We’ll share strategies for making a concrete plan to effectively communicate your science to any audience, from other researchers to the general public. We’ll also attempt to persuade you to test out multimedia outreach opportunities, such as short-form video platforms, and show you how to get started. This won’t just be a lecture: you’ll work on a plan of your own and share ideas and experiences in group conversations.

Goals:
Comfortable making an action plan to effectively communicate your science to any audience. Understand short-form video and the current social media landscape used for public outreach.

Description:

The Common Sensor Platform (CSP) is a unified NSF GAGE and SAGE Facilities engineering effort that is working to create a scalable, modular instrument platform that will be configurable to multiple types of geophysical instrumentation and adaptable to a variety of terrestrial environments.

In this session, we will present our first round of project deliverables, including the version 1 (v1) CSP station design, technical documents, and resources we have developed for users. We will also share our successes in building collaborative engineering practices and procedures across our instrumentation groups. Most importantly, we will be using this time to actively seek community feedback on our v1 design and will solicit ideas for the next round of CSP engineering efforts.

Goals:

The major goals for the session are to: a) introduce our v1 design to our PI community; b) communicate the engineering processes and workflows we have established thus far; and most importantly, c) receive feedback from our users and community members on our work to date. The feedback we receive will help inform our v2 design and identify new ideas and improvements to our future efforts.

Primary contact: Marianne Okal (EarthScope Consortium; marianne.okalearthscope.org)

Description:

SZ4D is a community-driven initiative for a long-term, interdisciplinary research program to define the limits and possibilities of predicting geohazards. This effort focuses on subduction zones, which host seismic, volcanic, landslide, and tsunamigenic hazards and their interactions. The purpose of this SIG is to update the community on recent and planned SZ4D activities, highlight opportunities available through existing programs such as SZNet, and seek community input on future directions.

Goals:

1) We seek to inform community members of the latest SZ4D efforts and initiatives and opportunities to engage with SZ4D. 

2) Efforts are underway to refine plans for instrumental arrays envisaged in the SZ4D Implementation Plan (Hilley et al., 2022) in preparation for instrumentation proposals. These arrays would include seismic, geodetic and other geophysical, geological, geochemical and environmental instruments, and community feedback is essential. 

3) SZ4D is also working to catalyze and coordinate other activities required to address the science questions outlined in the SZ4D Implementation Plan, including facilitating PI collaborations, and the SIG offers an opportunity for discussion and networking by interested community members to identify knowledge gaps and discuss strategies to address them.

Primary contact: Donna Shillington (Northern Arizona University; donna.shillingtonnau.edu)

Description:

Accelerate into the Future: Your On-Ramp to Cloud Computing Awaits! Cloud computing is not just at the forefront of technological advancement—it’s redefining the landscape of research and opening new doors for collaboration and open science. Join our session to explore the exciting developments and opportunities on the horizon for the EarthScope community. EarthScope Data Services has made substantial strides in developing a new cloud-based data management platform, an evolution of the NSF GAGE and SAGE physical data centers. This platform is modernizing NSF SAGE and GAGE data systems for enhanced access and laying the groundwork for extensible capacity. Importantly, this platform introduces new capabilities for researchers.

This session will include a comprehensive overview of the On-Ramp project that aims to help the geophysical community leverage cloud-computing for transformative research, reproducible open science and education. Additionally, this session will feature presentations on use cases to illustrate how these cloud architectures will enhance research opportunities. We will also dedicate time for a Q&A session to address the community’s questions and concerns. Don’t miss this chance to be part of the conversation!

Goals:

Sharing progress and plans with the community, listening to feedback from the community

Primary contact: Tammy Bravo (EarthScope Consortium; tammy.bravoearthscope.org)

Description:

This SIG session will bring together scientists to share successes and lessons learned from recent community experiments, including–but not limited to–the Cascadia Initiative, AACSE, ENAM-CSE, CASIE, Oklahoma wavefields, etc. We encourage anyone with interest in using community data, proposing or participating in a future community experiment to attend.

The SIG will be primarily discussion based, with a focus on ways for these experiments and resulting data to maximize impact and ensure board participation in acquisition, analysis and scientific collaboration.

We especially encourage early career researchers and students to participate! 

Goals:

Work towards a white paper/Eos with community best practices for maximizing participation and impact.

Primary contact: Lindsay Worthington (University of New Mexico; lworthingtonunm.edu)

Description:

Join us for an interactive Special Interest Session focused on establishing and maintaining effective group norms and protocols in geoscience research settings. This session will delve into the intricacies of setting up norms that foster collaboration, respect, and productivity, whether in the field, on research vessels, or in laboratory environments.

We will discuss insights into best practices for developing and implementing group norms that ensure smooth operation and communication within research teams. The session will also explore the importance of building robust protocols that streamline workflows, enhance safety measures, and promote efficiency in geoscience research settings.

We invite you to join us to share your efforts and gather community needs.

Goals:

Knowledge Sharing: Foster a community-driven exchange of knowledge and experiences related to establishing and maintaining effective group norms and protocols in geoscience research settings.

Best Practice Identification: Identify and highlight best practices for developing and implementing group norms that enhance collaboration, respect, and productivity within research teams.

Problem Solving: Facilitate discussions aimed at addressing common challenges faced by research teams in establishing and maintaining effective group norms, and collectively develop strategies to overcome these challenges.

Networking and Collaboration: Provide a platform for participants to network, collaborate, and build relationships with other members of the geoscience research community who share an interest in this topic.

Community Needs Assessment: Gather insights and feedback from community members to better understand their needs and challenges related to group norms and protocols in geoscience research, with the aim of informing future initiatives and resources.

Primary contact: Anika Knight (EarthScope Consortium, anika.knightearthscope.org)

Description:

Open science is an umbrella term describing open and participatory research practices, where publications, software, and data are shared freely. Mandates for open access publication, open data, and open sourcing of software are becoming more common from funding agencies and from publishers, leading to shifts in how we plan and conduct research, conceptualize research products, and share results.

The goal of this session is to present ideas and open up discussions on how open science practices can and should work in the geophysics community. The session will include some short presentation on definitions of open access/open data/open source and good practices for individuals and groups, combined with broad discussions on topics like the benefits of and potential barriers to open science, community norms surrounding open science, and expectations for reproducibility with open data/code.

Goals:

We hope participants will leave with an understanding of open science terminology and some new ideas on how to make their work more “open” both to the scientific community and more broadly. As various funding and publication mandates (and general good citizenship?) push towards more openness it’s useful to get the community talking about what we’re already doing, what we could improve on, and what positive changes might look like for geophysics in particular.

Open science terms aren’t always well understood by researchers, so one purpose of this session is to demystify the jargon (e.g., differences between green/gold/diamond open access) and show how open science concepts can be understood in the context of geophysics (e.g., how does open data align with common embargo period policies).

Beyond defining terminology, by discussing common open science questions in (small) group settings, the goal is for participants to come away with a sense for the concrete actions they might want to take towards open science practices as well as an understanding of cost/benefit for their work. This works in two directions: participants may learn strategies from each other for how to implement open science practices or work around various resource limitations, and the community as a whole can learn what common barriers (beyond just money) are that keep people from doing things like publishing OA and making their data and code available.

Primary contacts: Hannah Mark (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; hmarkwhoi.edu) and Anant Hariharan (University of California, Santa Barbara)