Remote monitoring as well as remote waveform data retrieval is an enabling capability for portable stations used in seismic hazards studies. Remote monitoring provides intra-deployment visibility of system performance to allow prompt detection, and subsequent resolution, of faults which may otherwise go undetected for the duration of the deployment and jeopardize a seismic campaign's successful outcome.  Waveform data retrieval allows intra-deployment quality control (QC) and can enable faster science. These benefits must be considered against the associated power consumption and telemetry bandwidth costs. These tradeoffs may drive a system implementation that limits remote retrieval to low resolution data or, in other use cases, restricts the retrieval of full resolution waveform data to specific periods of interest only.  In the case of deployments in harsh environments, such as polar or ocean bottom environments where field visits are cost prohibitive or may not be possible, even high cost remote retrieval of a complete data set may be preferable if it offers a savings and / or a reduction in operational risk in comparison to a station visit.

As part of this session, we discuss how advancement in low power portable geoscience instrumentation, combined with low power communication technology, deliver these new capabilities with flexible implementation balancing function and operational cost.

How to cite: Hamilton, V., Pigeon, S., Parker, T., Perlin, M., and Laporte, M.: Cost Efficient Station Monitoring and Remote Data Retrieval for Portable Seismic Stations, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-16722, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-16722, 2023.

Decades ago new opportunities in seismology were opened by the development of broadband seismic sensors with feedback. The three defining characteristics of these instruments were the bandwidth extension to longer periods, a much lower intrinsic noise and a higher dynamic range. However, the goal of further extending their bandwidth to frequencies above 100 Hz has proven elusive, because these sensors are plagued by parasitic resonances leading to modes not controllable by the feedback system.

Here we present a new low noise seismic borehole sensor with a truly VBB flat response over five frequency decades from 2.7 mHz (360 sec) to 270 Hz. The instrument has no mechanical resonances below 400 Hz. We achieved the bandwidth extension to high frequencies with improvements of the mechanical design, i.e. the arrangement of the pivots and the geometry of the spring.

The design is realized in a borehole arrangement, where three sensors are stacked in 90 degree angles to each other. Including a singe jaw holelock as a clamping mechanism the complete stack has a diameter of 89 mm, is 625 mm long and weighs about 24.5 kg. We show test results from three co-located complete borehole sensors with identical frequency responses.

How to cite: Guralp, C., Rademacher, H., Minchinton, P., Kirrage, R., Alimov, M., Jones, R., and Boustead, N.: A truly Very Broad Band (VBB) borehole seismometer with flat response over 5 decades of frequency, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-2690, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-2690, 2023.

Muography is a passive and non-destructive imaging technique that utilizes cosmic-ray muons for visualizing and monitoring the interior of geological structures and human-made objects. A rapid development of muographic observation technologies was achieved in the recent years, which allowed to resolve Earth's shallow subsurface with a resolution of a few meters and conduct long-term muon monitoring in harsh and varying environment. Muography can be applied as a complementary technique for Earth sciences and related engineering fields, e.g., for studying active volcanism, characterizing the overburden above underground sites, structural health monitoring infrastructures, exploring hidden cultural heritages, etc. We overview the recent progress in development of muography and we discuss case studies from volcanology to mining engineering from the Americas, Asia and Europe.

How to cite: Oláh, L.: Advances in cosmic-ray muography for Earth sciences and geophysical applications, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-3288, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-3288, 2023.

Seismic networks often face logistical and financial challenges that require portability, longevity and interoperability with existing equipment.

Güralp have combined proven ocean bottom, borehole and digitiser technology to produce an analogue seismometer with intelligence that benefits networks of all sizes. The Güralp Certis is a broadband analogue instrument that incorporates specific aspects of its sister digital instrument (Certimus) while still remaining compatible with third-party digitisers.

Each Certis stores its own serial number, calibration and response parameters internally and will automatically communicate these to a connected Minimus digitiser. This allows seismometer-digitiser pairings to be changed without manual entry of new parameters. If using GDI-link streaming protocol with the Minimus, these metadata parameters are transmitted within (and therefore inseparable from) the datastream itself. Therefore, this small piece of intelligence in the analogue sensor removes the need for any manual re-entry of response parameters anywhere along the sensor-digitiser-client chain.

Certis enables users to install in locations with poor horizontal stability (e.g., glaciers, dynamic landslide scarps, water-saturated soils), without the need for cement bases or precise levelling, as the sensor can be deployed at any angle regardless of which model digitiser is connected. Due to its small size, low weight and ultra-low power consumption, Certis significantly reduces logistical efforts and makes short term temporary deployments far easier.

Certis addresses many challenges of traditional seismometer deployments, including cost, but provides a flexible and simple solution for seismic monitoring applications across all disciplines.

How to cite: Whealing, D., Lindsey, J., Watkiss, N., and Reis, W.: A Rugged, Portable and Intelligent Analogue Seismometer for Future and Pre-Existing Arrays – Güralp Certis, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-7349, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-7349, 2023.

The SBUDNIC project was a collaboration between The National Research Council of Italy and Brown University’s School of Engineering. The project also got support from D-Orbit, AMSAT-Italy, La Sapienza-University of Rome and NASA Rhode Island Space Grant.

This scientific cooperation started in January 2021 and aimed to improve techniques and skills in Earth observation and its applications, with particular focus on teaching, research and knowledge transfer, as well as to promote open access to documentation, software and other information and resources for developing Earth observation capabilities.

The project was led by a team of students, professors and researchers and involved the construction of a 3U CubeSat according to an open and agile approach, using mostly commercial components commonly used on Earth, including an Arduino processor and AA Energizer batteries. The satellite was designed to allow the download of low resolution images in the amateur radio band.

SBUDNIC was launched on May 25, 2022 by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and was released into orbit at an altitude of about 525 kilometers by the ION Satellite Carrier platform of the Space logistics company D-Orbit.

As a New Space experiment, SBUDNIC has provided useful insights on several organizational, technological and regulatory aspects of the implementation of a CubeSat mission and confirmed the increasingly rapid and affordable accessibility of Space to the scientific and academic community.

We hope that the SBUDNIC project may be able to inspire some of the future engineers in universities, research and industry, in their effort to advance Space exploration, Earth observation techniques and innovative satellite technologies, tools that may prove of fundamental importance in addressing global challenges.

How to cite: Bigagli, L. and Fleeter, R.: SBUDNIC: lessons learned in implementing a CubeSat mission, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-16127, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-16127, 2023.

Direct analysis of micrometer-scale features embedded in solid samples of a wide chemical variety is an integral part of many fields in geo-, geobio-, and planetary sciences. Examples range from microscopic mineral inclusions in meteoritic material, (e.g., zircons, CAIs, chondrules, etc.) to biological inclusions in a variety of mineralogical host materials, e.g., (putative) fossils of microbial species. In many of these use-cases, the determination of the element and/or isotope composition, specifically those of minor or trace abundance, is of prime interest, meaning mass spectrometry is typically the preferred analysis technique.

As a result, a growing group of instruments has been (and are being) developed specifically with the purpose of element and/or isotope analysis of microscale features in solid hosts, each with its specific advantages and limitations. Perhaps the most well-known technique is (nano)SIMS, which boasts analysis spot sizes down to the nanometer level as well as ppm to ppb detection limits, but struggles with quantitativeness and capital and operating expenses. In the field of laser-based solid sampling mass spectrometric techniques, LA-ICP-MS has become a well-established technique, mainly due to its reproducibility and ease of operation. However, due to necessity to transport particles from the ablation plume to the ICP, this technique is inherently limited through fractionation effects and isobaric interferences with the plasma and carrier gas. Furthermore, sample dilution in the plasma and the subsequent loss of sample at the ICP-MS interface result in diminished limits of detection.

Another member of the laser-based solid sampling techniques is Laser Ablation Ionization Mass Spectrometry (LIMS), in which the ions present in the ablation plume are directly introduced into the mass spectrometer. This direct sampling of the ablation plume results in both a significant advantage over LA-ICP-MS (high sensitivity) and a challenge (mass resolution). The limited mass resolution of typical LIMS instruments often makes (quantitative) analysis challenging due to isobaric interferences, especially when applied to more complex materials. To solve this issue, the Laser Mass Spectrometer – Gran Turismo (LMS-GT) was developed at the University of Bern with the aim of achieving mass resolutions sufficient to resolve the most common isobaric interferences (M/ΔM = 10.000).

Over the last years, commissioning and continuous improvement of the instrument has been ongoing, which has led to a set of analytical performance characteristics which highlight the potential complementary value of LMS-GT. In this talk, we will discuss the latest technological developments¹, latest analytical performance metrics (mass resolution, mass accuracy, limits of detection, etc.), and element and isotope ratio accuracies^2,3. We will also discuss a case-study in which LMS-GT was used to study fossilized microbial inclusions in Gunflint chert⁴, highlighting both the potential strength and challenges for LMS-GT in a geo- and geobiosciences context.

1. Gruchola, S. et al., Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 474, 116803 (2022).

2. Wiesendanger, R. et al.,  J. Anal. At. Spectrom. 34, 2061–2073 (2019).

3. de Koning, C. P. et al.,  Int. J. Mass Spectrom. 470, 116662 (2021).

4. Lukmanov, R. A. et al., Front. Space Technol. 3, (2022).

How to cite: de Koning, C., Gruchola, S., Lukmanov, R., Keresztes Schmidt, P., Boeren, N., Riedo, A., Tulej, M., and Wurz, P.: Analytical performance assessment of LMS-GT, a newly-developed laboratory-scale Laser Ablation Ionization Mass Spectrometry instrument, in the context of geo- and planetary sciences, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-11295, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-11295, 2023.

The detection of vessels is considered an attractive byproduct of satellite radar altimetry, because it may complement the conventional tracking systems with the possibility to build long-term global statistics of ship traffic based on relatively small and manageable datasets of freely available data. Satellite radar altimetry was initially conceived and applied to the observation of ocean topography, being later extended to the coastal zone and to the observation of inland water.

The potentiality of SAR altimetry for the detection of ships has already been demonstrated with Cryosat2, and today Sentinel-3 is the first operational mission offering global SAR coverage with a constellation of two satellites.

Thanks to the enhanced azimuth (along-track) resolution available in the synthetic aperture radar (SAR) mode, the radar altimeter on board the Sentinel-3 satellite could be beneficial to other applications than ocean topography. In particular, this work studies the performance of algorithms for the automatic detection of ship targets from SAR mode data. In addition, the pre-processing of altimeter data by reliable detection algorithms, filtering out signal outliers from the sea surface response, largely contributes to enhance geophysical products that are typical in ocean topography studies (e.g. mean sea level).  Thus, altimeter data of today could be regarded as an additional non-cooperative source for vessel traffic monitoring or to map global traffic patterns over long periods of time.

This work proposes a processing chain based on mathematical morphology filtering and robust statistics to estimate the structured background and detect target signatures from radargrams. The detection stage is followed by an additional binary morphological filtering phase that is useful to estimate target characteristics, such as the height. The study shows that robust statistics outperform non-robust ones, in terms of target signal to background ratio and of rejection of false alarms. The study finally provides a first attempt to validate the analysis comparing detected target contacts with automatic identification system (AIS) data. 

How to cite: Scozzari, A. and Grasso, R.: Radar altimetry for the detection of ship traffic: an improved byproduct of satellite radar altimetry, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-13618, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-13618, 2023.

Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is an active sensor that can be mounted onboard satellite or airborne platforms for observing of Earth’s surface in any weather condition and even during night [1]. In the last years, it has been shown that the interferometric SAR (InSAR) technique allows [2] generating high quality Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) [1] from spaceborne [3] and airborne [4–7] SAR data.

Airborne SAR systems, unlike satellite SAR ones, are particularly suitable for environmental monitoring in case of emergencies due to their capability to maintain very tight revisit times and to acquire data practically without orbital constraints. The contribution of this work fits very nicely within this context. Indeed, in this work, we show the results obtained from the data collected during the acquisition campaigns carried out with the AXIS [5] and MIPS [8] airborne X-band interferometric SAR systems over the Stromboli island (Italy). In particular, starting from multiple single-pass interferometric SAR surveys we present the differences of the generated DEMs with the aim of measuring the topographic changes induced by the eruptive activity over the whole island during the July 2019 – October 2022 time interval. The work is supported by an agreement between IREA-CNR and the Civil Protection Department of Italy.

References

1. Franceschetti, G.; Lanari, R. Synthetic aperture radar processing; 1999;

2. Moreira, A.; Prats-Iraola, P.; Younis, M.; Krieger, G.; Hajnsek, I.; Papathanassiou, K.P. A tutorial on synthetic aperture radar. IEEE Geosci. Remote Sens. Mag. 2013.

3. Rabus, B.; Eineder, M.; Roth, A.; Bamler, R. The shuttle radar topography mission - A new class of digital elevation models acquired by spaceborne radar. ISPRS J. Photogramm. Remote Sens. 2003.

4. Perna, S.; Esposito, C.; Amaral, T.; Berardino, P.; Jackson, G.; Moreira, J.; Pauciullo, A.; Junior, E.V.; Wimmer, C.; Lanari, R. The InSAeS4 airborne X-band interferometric SAR system: A first assessment on its imaging and topographic mapping capabilities. Remote Sens. 2016, 8.

5. Esposito, C.; Natale, A.; Palmese, G.; Berardino, P.; Lanari, R.; Perna, S. On the Capabilities of the Italian Airborne FMCW AXIS InSAR System. Remote Sens. 2020, 12.

6. Pinheiro, M.; Reigber, A.; Scheiber, R.; Prats-Iraola, P.; Moreira, A. Generation of highly accurate DEMs over flat areas by means of dual-frequency and dual-baseline airborne SAR interferometry. IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens. 2018.

7. Wimmer, C.; Siegmund, R.; Schwäbisch, M.; Moreira, J. Generation of high precision DEMs of the Wadden Sea with airborne interferometric SAR. IEEE Trans. Geosci. Remote Sens. 2000.

8. Natale, A.; Berardino, P.; Esposito, C.; Palmese, G.; Lanari, R.; Perna, S. The New Italian Airborne Multiband Interferometric and Polarimetric SAR (MIPS) System: First Flight Test Results. Int. Geosci. Remote Sens. Symp. 2022, 2022-July, 4506–4509.

How to cite: Lanari, R., Esposito, C., Berardino, P., Natale, A., Palmese, G., and Perna, S.: Stromboli volcano monitoring with airborne SAR systems, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-10047, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-10047, 2023.

It is theoretically demonstrated  that, even with perfectly complete and perfectly accurate data, there is a fundamental ambiguity in the analysis of potential field data. The ambiguity may be easily illustrated by computing some of the various kinds of structures that can give rise to the same anomaly field. To solve the ambiguity and yield reasonable geophysical models we must therefore supply a priori information. In gravimetry, the ambiguity comes from the fact that only the excess mass is uniquely determined by the anomaly, neither the density nor the source volume. However, not only the excess mass can be uniquely estimated. Examples are the center of a uniformly dense (or magnetized) sphere or the top of a deeply extended homogeneously-dense cylinder. A priori information may consist of direct information (e.g., depth, shape) and/or of assuming that the source distribution has some specified properties (e.g., compactness, positivity). If one tries to classify the physical source-distributions in terms of their complexity, we may however use two different scaling laws, based on homogeneity and self-similarity, which allow modeling of the Earth in its complex heterogeneity. While monofractals or homogeneous functions are scaling functions, that is they do not have a specific scale of interest, multi-fractal and multi-homogeneous models need to be described within a multiscale dataset. Thus, specific techniques are needed to manage the information contained on the whole multiscale dataset. In particular,  any potential field  generated by a complex source may be modeled as  a multi-homogeneous field, which typically present a fractional and spatially varying homogeneity degree. For a source of irregular shape, it may be convenient to invert not the  field but a related quantity, the scaling function, which is a multiscale function having the advantage of not involving the density among the unknown parameters. For density or magnetic susceptibility tomographies, the degree of spatially variable homogeneity can be incorporated in the model weighting function, which, in this way, does not require prior assumptions because it is entirely deductible from the data. We discover that difficult quantities, such as the bottom of the sources, or multiple source systems are reasonably well estimated by abandoning the analysis at a single scale and unraveling the scale-related complexity of geophysical signals. The inherent self-consistency of these new multiscale tools is a significant step forward, especially in the analysis of areas where there is scarce other information about the sources.

How to cite: Fedi, M.: Solving the ambiguity in the potential field exploration of complex sources, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-13597, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-13597, 2023.

The wide use of the NDT technologies and the big database are produced, transmitted, collected, processed needs to be managed and well-presented towards monitoring of road transports. Using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) as one of the most efficient non-destructive tests in road transport monitoring.  Such database outcomes produced through on-site monitoring approaches are essential for providing the most reasonable decision-making tools to support best engineering judgment on-site. In addition to that the accuracy and precision of such decision-making tools are highly dependent on the data quality generated from different GPR images. Establishing performance indictor could avoid errors in dataset and unfavorable decisions in pavement management system. Consequently, GPR data management and transforming to local indicators is crucial to increase quality control of the dataset. This is still an ongoing challenging task for GPR support-knowledge.  

Establishing indicators are based on different criteria including intuitive outcomes, empirical outputs, and analytical results. Different GPR signal parameters can be correlated to the subsurface material changes and deterioration such as electromagnetic wave velocity, amplitude, centre frequency and signal attenuation to some local indicators. This can be under the category of the current challenges, the question is as follows, How GPR data can be converted to indicators based on the common defects in road transports. Therefore, establishing potential metrics to value GPR-related indicators in both a qualitative and quantitative approaches is crucial to provide better understanding of the defects and their propagation in road pavements.

How to cite: Rasol, M.: Towards sustainable road transport infrastructure: Insights from GPR performance indicator development and enhancement of data quality, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 23–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-1641, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-1641, 2023.