PROJECT TITLE: A USGS/PSN Seismology Education Program for Primary/Secondary Schools
PROJECT CHIEF: Edward Cranswick
U.S. Geological Survey, MS 966
Box 25046, Federal Center
Denver, CO 80225
TEL: 303-273-8609
PROGRAM ADDRESSED: NEHRP/SF
PROGRAM TASK/SUBTASK:
IV: APPLICATIONS AND UTILIZING RESEARCH RESULTS / IV.2: Transfer hazards information and assessment to users - educate professional groups, government officials, the media and the public about the nature, extent and likelihood of earthquake hazards.
PROJECT SUMMARY: The Public Seismic Network is a means of directly communicationg NEHRP goals to primary and secondary schools and to members of the general public who are most aware of and actively interested in seismic hazard mitigation poloicies. This is a proposal to foster links between the PSN educational programs in the schools and the USGS.
ABSTRACT
Overall Project Objectives, Plans, Strategy:
The principal objective of this project is the creation of a unified seismological education program for primary/secondary schools in cooperation with the Public Seismic Network (PSN) and the USGS. The purpose is to communicate the results of USGS research to the communities of seismogenic regions and, by that means, build an informed and active constituency of residents who support NEHRP goals (Cranswick et al., 1993). The USGS will serve as the scientific focus of the program and the PSN will be the interface between the USGS and the public, i.e., the schools. Three elementary schools of the Oak Grove School District in San Jose???? will serve as the testbed for this educational program but other schools will participate as well.
The program will teach students how to use digital and telecommunication techniques to observe local Earth processes, earthquakes, how to interpret these observations within the context of discipline of seismology, and how these processes impact the life of the modern technological community. The students will: 1) record earthquakes with digital seismographs at their schools; 2) pick P- and S-phases and perform other elementary analyses of these records; 3) upload the records to a central data center, an electronic bulletin board system (BBS); 4) locate earthquakes using S-minus-P times of all three schools; 5) download the Weekly USGS Seismicity Report from PSN BBS/USGS, Menlo Park and compare their locations with the Calnet locations; 6) correlate waveform amplitudes with earhquake distances and magnitudes; 7) record local rainfall; 8) examine the waveforms for seasonal variation related to ground water changes; 9) request lectures from USGS specialists on relevant subjects; 10) request information from local government agencies regarding public policies related to the mitigation of earthquake hazard; and, 11) produce a year-end class report of their studies.
The PSN will provide the hardware (including IBM-PC-compatible computers donated by the IBM corporation) and software components for the program. Members of the PSN will install the equipment and software, train the teachers how to use the system, be available for tecnical assistance and advice, and oversee the BBSs used by the program. Because PSN participation is central to this program, the history and current status of the PSN and its relationship to seismology for education will be summarized below.
In addition to causing $9 billion damage in the San Francisco Bay Area, the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake focused public attention on the hazard posed by earthquakes in the United States. Based partly on aftershock studies of the Loma Prieta Earthquake in which they had participated (Cranswick et al., 1990a) and on their experience in the application of PC computers to seismic waveform data processing (Cranswick et al., 1990b), Cranswick and Banfill (1990) presented a poster at the December 1990 AGU meeting in San Francisco entitled, "A Proposal for a High-density Peoples Seismograph Array Based on Home Computers in the San Francisco Bay Area". This outlined the possibilities of a network of event-triggered digital seismographs owned and operated by private citizens. The presentation excited a generally enthusiastic response in the local and national media which in turn stimulated roughly a hundred requests from individuals and organizations for further information about the "Proposal". In response to these requests, a newsletter was sent which described the concept at greater length and defined it as a "Public Seismic Network" (PSN).
One of the requests for information came from a group of amateur seismologists in San Jose, California (PSN/San Jose) who had been inspired by the Loma Prieta Earthquake to build and operate their own PC-based digital seismograph systems. In February 1991, an Australian television production company, BEYOND 2000, which specializes in science/technology subjects filmed a short program about the PSN at the residence of S. Hammond (PSN/San Jose) and at the USGS, Menlo Park in cooperation with E. Cranswick, S. Walter, W.H.K. Lee, C. Dietel, and T. Hanks. A. Lindh (USGS, Menlo Park) had suggested that a PC-based electronic bulletin board system (BBS) which could accessed by telephone/mode should be established as an information center for those interested in participating in a PSN. Related to this suggestion, S. Hammond established a PSN BBS at his residence in early 1991 (PSN BBS/San Jose); subsequent requests for PSN information were referred to this BBS. During the spring and summer of 1991, a USGS GEOS portable autonomous digital seismograph was deployed in cooperation with C. Dietel and R. Borcherdt (USGS, Menlo Park) for a month at a time at each of three PSN stations operated by S. Hammond, R. Chelberg, and P. Rowe (PSN/San Jose), respectively, to calibrate the response of the PSN seismographs. J. Lahr (USGS, Menlo Park) had suggested more than a decade ago (Lahr, 1978) that primary/secondary schools operate seismographs as part of their science curriculum. Following a discussion in May 1991 at the USGS Open Hose in Menlo Park between A. Lindh, S. Hammond, and G. Stoehr, a science teacher at the Los Altos (California) High School, a PSN seismograph station was installed at that school. An example of a seismogram recorded at the school is shown in Figure 1 (Figure 1b of Cranswick et al., 1993). In September 1991, E. Cranswick, B. Gardner (a USGS volunteer for PSN), and L. Wennerberg (USGS, Menlo Park) met with PSN members in the San Francisco Bay Area, and E. Cranswick then also presented several lectures about the PSN (e.g., Seismographic Station, University of California at Berkeley; Bay Area Geophysical Society, Chevron Corp., Walnut Creek; PSN/San Jose). Another newsletter (PSN Newsletter, December 1991, Cranswick and Gardner) was sent to people on the PSN mailing list in late 1991 and also distributed at a poster presentation about the PSN/San Jose at the December 1991 AGU meeting in San Francisco (Cranswick et al., 1991). At the meeting, E. Cranswick discussed the possibilities of producing low-cost seismographs with representatives of several seismograph manufacturers (Teledyne-Geotech; Kinemetrics; Nanometrics) and M. Gokberg (Institute of the Physics of the Earth, Moscow), and he also discussed the possibilities of a PSN with D. Simpson (Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology: IRIS).
In April 1992, IRIS sponsored a special workskop about seismology and education at the joint IRIS/SSA meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico. While in Armenia that April, E. Cranswick discussed the application of a PSN-type system with the Armenian National Survey for Seismic Protection. In June, G. Nolet (Princeton University/IRIS) submitted a proposal to the NSF for an IRIS-sponsored educational program to develop low-cost seismographs for recording teleseisms at schools and universities (see Nolet, 1993). In late 1992, PSN BBSs were established in Pasadena, California at the residence of Dorothy and Jerry Darby and at USGS, Menlo Park in cooperation with A. Lindh, J. Lahr,
