The project, funded by the USGS and lead by Dr Ben Brooks and Todd Ericksen from the USGS Earthquake Science Center and Dr Janet Watt and Dr Tom Parsons from the USGS Coastal and Marine Hazards Research Program, is making precise measurements of the positions of seafloor benchmarks using a combination of GNSS and acoustic techniques from a Wave Glider. This technique provides cm-scale accuracy positions for geodetic analysis of the physical processes controlling the subduction zone and the behaviour of the “megathrust” fault underneath it. The Wave Glider is an autonomous surface vehicle, capable of operating at sea for months at a time but requires 24-hour supervision to deal with any issues that arise – like dodging other ships heading right for it! The University of Stuttgart team are “pilots” for the Wave Glider during daylight hours in Germany. The goal of the project is to better understand the earthquake and tsunami hazards from the Cascadia subduction zone off the northwest coast of the USA, and our effort is coordinating with a major science community experiment to study this subduction zone.
The Wave Glider was successfully recovered by the Research Vessel Coral Sea on 24th October. The focus now is on processing the new data sets we collected during this mission.
