Comment on Oregon State University Internet for MagnetoTellurics

https://ngf.oregonstate.edu/ngf-data-portal

Hello,

I have been looking at global sensor networks for the Internet Foundation. Now magnetotelluric networks. I notice you have data at IRIS, but for visitors to your OregonState.edu site, it seems hard to know where you data would be on IRIS.edu. I have been asking around, and there do not seem to be any permanent shared continuously operating MT networks. Do you operate any clusters or arrays continuously? I am looking at all the IRIS MT data. But also raw data at 256 and 4096 sps. Do you know of anyone operating at Msps or Gsps or higher? There should be some. Probably for some other purpose.

I was looking again and found https://ds.iris.edu/ds/products/emtf/ that says Oregon State University, under NSF grant, put together the EMTF site at http://ds.iris.edu/spud/emtf

I see the spot transfer functions. But no metadata. The listing at http://ds.iris.edu/mda/_US-MT-TA/ has the whole _US+MT_TA but only older short term, low samplng rate data. It is not easy (or possible for most people) to get from the transfer functions to the data. And the transfer functions are not clearly documented. It is just too many pages and pieces. site:IRIS.edu “magnetotelluric” shows 3740 entry points, so that is too many for any practical users. Each person must spend much time gathering organizing the web pages and old documents and random links – before every doing anything. site:

Many of the site:OregonState.edu “magnetotelluric” reference are forwarded to static pages at the library.OregonState.edu. They do not know what is going on, cannot answer questions. “magnetotelluric” on the Internet is now 480,000 entry points. Yet the Internet is not self-organizing and no one has taken responsibility for “magnetotelluric” and related topics. And all human and computer languages.

I don’t expect you to do anything, no one does. But maybe someone will realize that you cannot just throw stuff on the Internet and say “we are sharing”

I would like to know if there are any continuously operating MT arrays, and especially any operating from Msps and upward. The reason those are important is they can be used for imaging and characterizing sources using time of flight constraints. It is not particularly simple and requires global cooperation, but probably worthwhile. Thanks for your work, please try harder on the Internet so it is useful for people outside a narrow group.  It is usually hundreds of times larger than best practices for every topic on the Internet.

The LIGO strain data is 16384 sps. Going through their whole process, they have lots of magnetic noise. But rather than study and measure and share it, they take it out mostly undocumented.  Sorry to be so terse. It has been a long day already. 🙂

Richard Collins, Director, The Internet Foundation

Hello,

I was at http://ds.iris.edu/spud/emtf/18876498# and following up on “USMTArray South Magnetotelluric Transfer Functions”. when I found your page at https://greengeophysics.com/mt-array. It says you are gathering the data from IRIS.edu and in conjunction with Oregon State University. Aah! “Green Geophysics is the largest user of OSU’s National Geoelectromagnetic Facility”

I am going through “magnetotellurics” on the Internet as that topic reaches status as a global sensor network. It (the MT network now) does not seem to operate any permanent, continuously operating node, clusters or arrays.

Have you heard of anyone? I talked to Alan Chave yesterday and he said he had not heard of any, maybe the Japanese. I asked Andy Frassetto, he did not know of any. That was a couple of weeks ago.

I am looking particularly for continuous (24/7) and anything at Msps or Gsps. I follow developments in Msps, Gsps up to Tsps (Tera samples per second) because so many global sensor networks are using them. That parallels the software defined radio based group expansion. I have a core of about 20 global sensors types that I follow closely, and try to see barriers and problems and opportunities Internet-wide. I have been doing this for 23 years now since I took over TheInternetFoundation.Org from Network Solutions when the original Internet Foundation was cancelled. One person cannot do what a $6B a year independent nonprofit was supposed to do, but I told them better one person than none at all.

Richard Collins, Director, The Internet Foundation