April 23, 2012

SandBoxBlogs: Glenwood Springs Post Independent "Global positioning network is mapping Earth's interior"

This...is very interesting.  Did you know west Garfield county was home to the Plate Boundary Observatory?

Marian Lyman Kirst:
"RIFLE, Colorado — On a chilly morning, Fred Jenkins strides across the West Garfield County landfill. Past hunkered-down dumptrucks and mountains of appliances alive with chattering magpies, he stops at what appears to be a tripodal alien spore.

It's a global positioning system (GPS) monument that Jenkins helped install in this sage-speckled swath of western Colorado five years ago. With practiced hands, he replaces the monument's antenna and receiver box, which have stopped transmitting data.

“Probably a lightning strike,” he muses, scratching his cinnamon-sugar goatee.

Dubbed P031, the station is one in an array of more than 1,100, scattered around the country from wilderness peaks to airports to prison yards.

Together, they comprise the National Science Foundation's nine-year-old Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO), a project overseen by the nonprofit UNAVCO, which facilitates geoscience research in the U.S. The PBO is the second-largest global positioning network in the world, right behind Japan's GPS Earth Observation Network.

It's also one of the largest efforts to survey and map the Western U.S. since the Lewis and Clark expedition, said David Kasmer, a PBO field engineer working the Eastern Sierra and the Rocky Mountain states.

“Except that we are focused on mapping the interior of the Earth, its inner workings. It's the evolution of surveying,” Kasmer said...."  (Read more?  Click title)

"Unapologetically pursuing and tracking patterns within the news others make since 2010."

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