Field Seismologist
Department of Terrestrial Magnetism
Carnegie Institution of Washington
5241 Broad Branch Road, NW
Washington, DC 20015-1305
202-478-8844 (phone)
202-478-8821 (FAX)
As the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism's Field Seismologist, I am
primarily responsible for the upkeep of our Seismic instrument pool, its
deployment in various field campaigns, and the processing and archival of the
collected Seismic data. I am also constantly working on improvements to the
various tools and processes involved in this workflow.
This is my home page at the Carnegie Institution of Washington,
which focuses on my work at the institute.
You are welcome to also check out my personal Web site: Code
and Butter
Data Processing
Data coming from the field usually requires quite a bit of pre-processing,
before it can be effectively used for scientific research. That pre-processing
typically involves data format conversions, quality control and the correction
of minor problems (e.g. timing errors, or incorrectly entered metadata), and
finally the building of SEED volumes. Once the data is in the standard SEED
format, it can be easily converted to SAC, or whatever other format may be
required for the final data analysis. Also, data in SEED format can be
archived at the IRIS DMC, from where researchers around the world can easily
download it for their projects.
While much of this work is done with standard software packages, some of
these still offered "opportunities for improvement", i.e. I felt that it was
worth to rewrite parts of them to better fit my needs. The result of this
effort is a new software package, which I named AcquiTools, available for download since late
2009. AcquiTools has since led to two spin-off projects: an XML
based format for the description of seismic meta-data named AcquiML,
and an iOS App for the control of Reftek RT130 data loggers named AcquiControl.
Field Work
As one would expect from a Field Seismologist, I tend to spend a
significant part of my time out in the field. During the past four years I
have been involved in four major field projects: PLUME, HLP, USACROSS, and ASSETS. This brought me to some
quite interesting places, such as Hawaii, Eastern Oregon, Parkfield, and the
Olympic Peninsula.
Since late 2009 all of this field work is complete, and all but
one of our instruments are back at the lab. (This is the first time, that this
happens since I joined Carnegie in early 2006!) However, processing and
analyzing all that previously collected data is still keeping me and my co-workers
quite busy a year later.
Former Research in Electromagnetics
Before I joined the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism in early 2006, I
was studying Geophysics at Frankfurt University. There I mostly concentrated
on various aspects of Natural Low Frequency Electromagnetics, especially
lightning research and magnetotellurics. Some of this might be still
of interest, so I put up a separate page on
Natural Low Frequency Electromagnetics.
It seems a bit paradoxical, that now, that I am employed in a department
with "Terrestrial Magnetism" in its name, I am working purely in Seismology
instead. Maybe someday I find the time to bring a little terrestrial magnetism
back to this place? Oh well, so many interesting things to do... so
little time. ;)
Other Stuff
Just before I started work on my Master's thesis, I took up a part-time job
at the University of Frankfurt's Department of Physical Geography. In 1997 and
1998 I worked there in remote sensing. To be more specific, I mostly scanned
aerial photographs and geo-referenced them to maps or satellite images to
produce orthophotos. These were then used to draw maps and to verify maps drawn
by others. Most of this
work was accomplished using the GIS packages ERDAS Imagine and ArcInfo/ArcView.
While I was a student at Frankfurt University, I did not just concentrate
on Geophysics, but took plenty of courses in neighboring fields as well: among
them Physics, Geology, Physical Geography, Meteorology, and even some
Astronomy and Astrophysics. Not all of these courses were required or closely
related to my major, but I simply found them fascinating. I probably spent
much more time on them, than was helpful for my career. But I still strongly
believe, that one has to look into neighboring fields, if one wants to see the
Physics of our planet in a broader perspective. Well, and it was fun!