How does this cartoon relate to a lecture on IRIS you may ask? Like IRIS,
PhD Comics .com is an essential website for any graduate student. As I
said at the beginning, this class is all about imparting practical knowledge.
Incorporated Research
Institutions for Seismology
IRIS
Navigating the Webpage; Data Tools
IRIS Mission
 Facilitate and conduct geophysical investigations of seismic
sources and Earth properties using seismic and other
geophysical methods.
 Promote exchange of geophysical data and knowledge,
through use of standards for network operations, data
formats, and exchange protocols, and through pursuing
policies of free and unrestricted data access.
 Foster cooperation among IRIS members, affiliates, and
other organizations in order to advance geophysical
research and convey benefits from geophysical progress to
all of humanity.
IRIS Programs
 DMS - Data Management System
 Includes the Data Management Center (DMC)
 PASSCAL - Program for Array Seismic Studies of the
Continental Lithosphere
 Provides active and passive seismic instrumentation
 GSN - Global Seismic Network
 USArray - In partnership with Earthscope
 Education and Outreach
 Homepage: http://www.iris.edu
Seismic Monitor
Data at the DMC
 Seismic data at the DMC comes from a variety of
sources
 IRIS/USGS (GSN data)
 IRIS/IDA (more GSN data)
 PASSCAL Instrument Center (PIC)
 Univ. of Washington (provides phase picks)
 Array Network Facilities (TA data)
 Kyrgyzstan International Research Center
 Kazakhstan Seismic Data Center
Types of Data1
 Waveform Data
 Active Source data – primarily from PASSCAL
 Passive Source data – majority of the waveforms at DMC
 Channel Response Data
 Event or Earthquake Catalogs






NEICALRT
FINGER (last 7 days of data)
QED (quick epicenter determinations)
WHDF (weekly hypocenter data file)
MHDF (monthly hypocenter data file)
ISCCD (two year lag)
Types of Data2
 Continuous Waveform Data
 Event Oriented Data
 Assembled Data
Metadata
 Data about data
 For seismic data, the metadata is the information about




Network
Station
Channel
Response
Data Formats
 SEED – Standard for the Exchange of Earthquake Data
 A SEED volume contains both waveform and metadata
 Dataless SEED volumes include only the metadata
 SEED volumes can also store hypocenter and phase data
 miniSEED
 Dataonly SEED file
 SAC – Seismic Analysis Code
 One of the most common formats in use for passive seismic
data
 SEG-Y
 One of the most common formats in use for active source
data
Where do you begin?
 www.iris.edu/data
Continuous Data
 BUD – Buffer of Uniform Data
 near real-time, not quality controlled (unQC’d), partial datasets
 Continuous miniSEED data organized by channel day
 Archived Data
 delayed, QC’d, full data sets
 Customize your request to get full SEED volumes
Event Oriented Data
 SPYDER – System to Provide You Data from
Earthquakes Rapidly
 Near real-time, unQC’d, partial data sets
 You will get data from BUD as well as other autoDRMs
around the world
 FARM – Fast Archive Recovery Method
 Delayed, QC’d, full data set
 DMC routinely pre-assembles data for Mw≥5.7 and down to
5.5 if depth is ≥100 km
 Pre-assembled datasets are for 60 minutes past origin time
and are available 6 weeks to 3 months post-eq
Assembled Data
 Any non-SEED pre-assembled dataset
 Assembled data sets, for the most part, come "as-is."
Some sets can be broken up into smaller sets but most
come as a complete package.
 Most assembled datasets are active source
reflection/refraction experiments collected on portable
PASSCAL instrumentation
 Others are from USGS, SEIS-UK, OBSIP (active or
passive source), other academic institutions.
 Not necessarily seismic data (gravimeter, etc.)
How do you know what is at
the DMC?
 SeismiQuery
 Set of pre-formatted database queries that access the DMC
Oracle database
Wilbur II
 Personal favorite, web-based event based request tool
 Choose an earthquake, choose a group of stations, set a
request based on arrival time, download the seed volume
from the web in either SEED or SAC format
 http://www.iris.edu/dms/wilber.htm

ftp://ftp.iris.washington.edu/pub/userdata/Heather_DeShon/DeShon_Chile2010/
A side note on
Virtual Networks
 a group of stations and/or seismic networks, representing an
affiliation that goes beyond the traditional bounds of seismic
networks to represent an umbrella organization or initiative
 Common ones to use





_GSN GSN
_US-TA USArray Transportable Array
_US-FA USArray Flexible Array
_US-BB USArray Backbone
_US-ALL USArray all components
BUD web tool
 Accesses continuous waveforms
BreqFast
 Batch REQuests, Fast
 Emailed to breq_fast@iris.washington.edu
 Submitting breq_fast files via a Mac e-mail client. Under the
Mac Mail preferences there is a "Message Format" under the
"Composing" tab that should be in "Plain Text" rather than "Rich
Text".
 Web requests via SeismiQuery
 http://www.iris.edu/SeismiQuery/breq_fast.phtml
 EXAMPLE of Email Text Format …fixed format file
.NAME Heather DeShon
.INST Univ. Memphis
.MAIL 3890 Central Ave. Memphis TN 38152
.EMAIL hdeshon@memphis.edu
.PHONE 901-678-1527
.FAX -
.MEDIA Electronic (ftp)
.LABEL Peru.1991032013.1.request
.QUALITY B
.END
GRFO IU 1999 01 02 00 18 10.4 1999 01 02 00 20 10.4 1 SHZ
ANTO IU 1999 01 02 02 10 36.6 1999 01 02 02 12 36.6 1 SH?
AFI
IU 1999 01 02 02 10 37.1 1999 01 02 02 12 37.1 1 BH? 00
A side note on
Waveform Quality
 The DMC grades waveform quality accordingly
 R – real-time data, unQC’d, original waveform
 Q – QC’d
 D – older data that can’t be judged as R or Q
 The DMC has begun implemented a new type of
continuous data that is dynamically calculated when
you make a request
 M – merged R and Q data
 You can request .Quality B data, or the best available,
but be aware not B gets you M since May 2010
How much data can I
request?
 DMC will post SEED volumes up to 30 GB, but you
have to use 64-bit version 5.0 of rdseed to extract the
data
 This is a new policy. The limit used to be 2GB and
smaller shipments can still be read using older 32-bit
versions of rdseed
What do I do with
a SEED file?
 rdseed or jrdseed - reads a seed volume
 Comes as a unix executable that can be run with flags or in
an interactive mode
 Comes as a java-based gui
 You can output the waveforms stored in the seed volume into
a number of standard formats, including SAC
 Usage: rdseed -{acCsSpRtde} [-f filename] [v (n)]
JWEED and VASE
 JWEED and VASE are Java based applications that you
have to install on your computer. They are not currently
installed at CERI, except on some faculty Macs
 JWEED – Java version of the event-related WEED request
tool
 VASE – Viewer and Seismogram Extraction tool used to
access continuous data
DHI Servers
 JWEED and VASE access data from any participating
Data Handling Interface (DHI) servers.
 Current servers for waveforms include





4 IRIS servers (POND, DC, BUD, Archive)
GSC
2 Berkeley servers for NorCal data (DART, DC)
2 CalTech servers for SoCal data
IPGP - Geoscope
 Also have event servers, including Memphis
Move to JWEED tutorial
SOD
 Standing Order for Data
 Developed a the Univ. of South Carolina
http://www.seis.sc.edu/sod/
 Automates data selection, downloading, and routine
processing tasks
 Can also be used to query DHI servers and create breqfast
requests
 When left running, any time an earthquake meeting your
criteria occurs, the data will be accessed, processed, and
downloaded to your machine
 SOD gets installed on a unix system and is run from a terminal
command line
Usage: sod –f sodrecipe
 Write xml formatted input files called SOD recipes that specify
criteria for data selection and a processing stream (filters, remove
instrument response, etc.)
 eventArm - eventArm gathers events from the server specified in
the event finder
 networkArm - The networkArm goes out to the server specified in
the network finder, and retrieves all the networks, stations sites, and
channels that server knows about that pass the subsetters
contained in the arm
 waveformArm - waveformArm downloads and processes
waveforms individually
 waveformVectorArm- The waveformVectorArm groups three
orthogonal components from a site and then does its processing on
them as a group.