Dear Colleagues,
I enjoyed our meetings in Perugia and fellowship after hours.
There has not been a review/update of the FDSN Backbone in many
years, and WG1 discussed the consideration of additional sites.
At the minutes of our meeting in Santiago, there was discussion of
increasing the size of the Backbone:
"• Should the FDSN backbone of high quality stations be increased
from 200 to perhaps 300?"
"On the topic of the FDSN backbone the issues to be considered were
the expansion of the backbone in terms of the number of stations, the
goal of making this a real time network, maintain the high quality of
the network and to insure that the FDSN backbone was properly
documented with metadata in FDSN SEED format. This issue was referred
to the WG I for consideration.
"Working Group I issues discussed lead the Excom to recommend that
the expansion of the FDSN backbone is a desirable thing especially
when one considers all of the new members. Each member should
designate at least one new station to be become part of the FDSN
network. The focus of the backbone is still to be broadband when
possible, geographically appropriate and if possible a station that
delivers data in real time."
In the spirit of the discussions and with an interest in soliciting
ideas from other Networks, I have reviewed the current contribution
of the GSN to the FDSN Backbone. In the attached spreadsheet
(information is from the FDSN station list), I submit 27 stations for
consideration within an expanded FDSN Backbone. All of the sites have
or will have open real-time data.
The USGS has 5 of 9 new GSN sites in the Caribbean are completed, all
will have open, real-time data. It may be of interest to consider
these sites for the Backbone.
There are a number of additional GSN sites in the US which are not
proposed.
I am receptive to your perspective and comment.
Best regards,
Rhett
Rhett Butler