Whakaari Volcano

Data Gaps, why are you seeing some lately on the volcano stations

Published: Tue Jan 23 2018 4:30 PM
News

For those of you closely following the earthquake drum plots you will have noticed some have gone offline for a half a day or so recently. This is due to network upgrades and equipment replacements.

Following the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake some of the tasks in our annual work plan got a little behind. Many of these related to upgrading the GNSS receivers and the telemetry equipment in use at our remote sites. We have also been updating our field cabinets to allow for more batteries and equipment in the cabinets. This has been nationwide, but recently the tech’s have been working at Taranaki and the Tongariro National Park area as the weather allows. The more settled summer weather is allowing us to work at some of the higher altitude sites in the National Parks.

View of the Te Maari outstation showing the solar array, cabinet, web camera, telemetry antenna and GNSS pilar

View of the Te Maari outstation showing the solar array, cabinet, web camera, telemetry antenna and GNSS pilar

Some of the issues we have faced have been related to the size of our original cabinets, as they have turned out to be too small at some sites. Particularly once they must house extra batteries, a GNSS receiver, seismic digitizer, acoustic sensor, auxiliary electronics and radios. The other issue has been bandwidth on the radios. The technology has advanced considerably in this area hence we can now operate more data links and transmit more data. This allows GeoNet to move a lot more data and faster. This gives us better reliability and/or redundancy in many areas and makes a big difference when filling in data gaps.

View of the interior of one of the new GeoNet field cabinets

View of the interior of one of the new GeoNet field cabinets