This 5-day course will provide instruction in basic Magnetotelluric (MT) theory and application, including hands-on experience with magnetotelluric (MT) instruments managed by the EarthScope Primary Instrument Center (EPIC) and the evolving landscape of software tools for developing research products with MT datasets. The short course will combine field demonstrations, lectures, guided exercises, and group discussion. Instruction and training will be provided by EPIC technical staff and experts from the MT science community. We welcome participants from a variety of backgrounds and career stages (graduate student and beyond), and are especially keen to engage potential future users of EPIC facility portable MT instrument pool. Course enrollment will be capped at around 15 attendees.
Funding to attend is available for individuals currently based at a U.S. academic institutions and for U.S. citizens doing research work abroad, and will support costs related to domestic travel, room, and board.
Applications to participate are now closed. Review of applications and participant selection will begin September 16th. Notification regarding the status of your application will be provided by September 23rd.
Participants should plan to arrive on Sunday, October 27 by late afternoon and depart after midday on Friday, November 1. We will work with accepted participants to arrange travel to and from Socorro, NM.
Learning Objectives
- After participating in the course, attendees will be able to explain the basics of MT theory and how to successfully collect data with MT instrumentation, and how to properly archive that data.
- After participating in the course, attendees will be able to download and access MT data from the cloud in Jupyter notebooks.
- After participating in the course, attendees will be able to explain the MT workflow from field installation to data archive to data processing to inversion and interpretation.
- After participating in the course, attendees will be able to explain how the design of an MT survey will impact the dataset that is collected.
- After participating in the course, attendees will be able to utilize open source MT software including, AURORA/MTH5, MTpy, and SimPEG
- After participating in the course, attendees will be able to critically evaluate MT data results.
- After participating in the course, attendees will gain confidence in their ability to carry out field installation, data processing, and interpretation for their own future MT research.
Participant Commitment
- 5 days, with field work on day 1 followed by lab and lecture on days 2-5.
- Daily sessions are 8 hours long
- Willingness to travel on Sunday (10/27) and Friday (11/1)
Prerequisites, Computer and Data
- Graduate student status or equivalent past experience, in the geosciences or a related field
- Knowledge of Linux command line and Python is preferred, but not essential
- A modern (<5 years old) laptop computer capable of accessing the internet
- Able to elucidate the research need, or other need, for taking the course in writing
Brief Agenda
| Monday, October 28 | Introduction to MT theory and instrumentation |
| Tuesday, October 29 | MT data, data formats, software, and data processing |
| Wednesday, October 30 | MT dataset explorations |
| Thursday, October 31 | MT inversions and Earth models |
| Friday, November 1 | Future opportunities with MT and wrap-up |
Assessment
Attendees will demonstrate the learning goals by responding to surveys and quizzes before, during, and after the short course.
Instructors
- Paul Bedrosian, U.S. Geological Survey
- Seogi Kang, Stanford University
- Karl Kappler, Kappler & Associates
- Jared Peacock, U.S. Geological Survey