The future of passive seismic acquisition

Journal article

It is an exciting time to be a seismologist. In November 2018, the InSight lander touched down on Mars and deployed the first seismometer on the surface of another planet. This feat means planetary seismologists are now searching for marsquakes and hope to provide images of its interior that will help to understand how rocky planets form. However, we have been doing this for a long time in more familiar territory back home on Earth where, in recent years, the field of terrestrial seismology has reached a turning point with significant developments in instrumentation and the manner of their deployment. Despite this, equipment available to the UK community has not kept pace and needs urgent regeneration if the UK is to lead in the field of passive seismology in the future. To begin the process of redesigning the UK's equipment for the next few decades, the British Geophysical Association sponsored a New Advances in Geophysics (NAG) meeting in November 2018 in Edinburgh on The Future of Passive Seismic Acquisition. What follows is a historical account of how and why we arrived at the present-day UK seismological research and resource base, a summary of the Edinburgh meeting, and a vision for the passive seismic facilities required to support the next 20 years of seismological research.

Authors: Hammond, J; England, R; Rawlinson, N; Curtis, A; Sigloch, K

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Journal: Astronomy and Geophysics
• Volume: 60
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 2.37-2.42
• Publication date: 2019-04-01
• DOI: 10.1093/astrogeo/atz102
• EISSN: 1468-4004
• ISSN: 1366-8781
• Language: English
• Keywords: FFR