With a little help from our friends

While Simone and I are out in the desert doing the grunt work of collecting data and adding protection from the teeth of desert critters, the real heroes are the folks who worked to make this possible. First, we need to thank the PIs, Whitney Behr (ETH Zurich), Thorsten Becker (UT Austin), and Vera Schulte-Pelkum (Univ. Colorado, Boulder) for conceiving of this project and putting together the proposal. Secondly, we need to thank the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) for providing the funding and the National Science Foundation (NSF) for funding SCEC. Next we need to acknowledge Dan Duncan and Marcy Davis from the UT Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) for their work putting together the quick deploy boxes. Additionally, in regards to the station boxes, we need to thank RELION, a company that produces lithium-ion batteries and provided us 20 high-quality batteries at an exceptional price point. 

Finally, I want to thank the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for permitting us to put out the stations. The Mojave National Preserve allowed us to put a station, MOJS, in an area with a little bit of already affected land and the BLM Needles Field Office allowed us to deploy in the Bristol Mountains Wildness and Mojave Trails National Monument. These are areas that humans rarely if ever visit and it really makes hiking through this natural preserve a wonderful experience.

Today we were expecting heavy rain all day, so we decided to have an easier day of it. First, we revisited two stations (MOJC and MOJG) which I wasn't 100% sure were working after our earlier service. After a quick check of each station, I'm now confident both are working properly. Following that, we went to the end of our line, servicing MOJS and then MOJR. Both stations were in perfect working condition so we grabbed the data and headed back to the Quality Inn in Barstow after stopping for lunch in the famous Ludlow Cafe. 


Outside the Ludlow Cafe.

MOJR being happy.

View of the Old Dad mountains from MOJR

View of the Old Dad mountains from MOJR

View of the Old Dad mountains from MOJR

View of the hills in which MOJQ is located from MOJR. To get to MOJQ from MOJR requires either a long trek up the river valley or a quick climb to the top of the sides.

View from inside the Ludlow Cafe. A true slice of Americana.

View of the Old Dad mountains from MOJR

A few days of data at MOJA, vertical channel. 

Zoom in of an earthquake from previous.

Still closer zoom in of the earthquake. P, S, and surface waves show up nicely.

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