Bighorns Field Photos

Photos: Summer in the Bighorns

Thank you for volunteering!

Volunteers spent one to two weeks helping BASE by deploying portable seismometers in and around the Bighorn Mountains of northern Wyoming. Along with other field adventures, volunteers helped program the seismometers, and in pairs deployed 30-40 seismometers per day. Seismometers were placed along county roads and highways, some very remote.

The Bighorns:

Clockwise fom top left: about the Bighorns; view of the Cloud Peak Wilderness Area; tectonic models for the Bighorn range (see Project Design), and Sheep Mountain anticline. Learn all you need to know about the project from Dave Thomas (of IRIS PASSCAL instrument center, performing live in Shell):

2009/2010 Short Period and Broadband Installation:

In the summer of 2009, crews from the Colorado College and University of Colorado installed 38 broadband seismometers (top left) in a grid pattern across the Bighorns. 168 short period seismometers, installed by students at the University of Colorado (top right) followed in spring/summer 2010 on five transects across the mountains (see Project Design). The instruments were removed from September - November 2010.

Clockwise from top left: A completed broadband installation;Patrick Bastien (PASSCAL) installs a short period; up close with a 40-T1 short period seismometer; a cold day in November for removing short periods; Will Yeck (CU) palleting equipment for the return shipment to PASSCAL in October; Jeremy Silver (CU) digging a trench for the short period seismometer's cables. The seismometer, in the pink box, will be buried at the end of the trench. The battery, GPS and datalogger are in the box with the solar panel and will be left on the ground all summer.

Summer 2010 On Location:

Project participants on the west side of the mountains lived at the Iowa State University Geology Field camp near Shell, WY (above).

Project members on the east side of the Bighorns lived in a 5-bedroom rental house on the outskirts of Buffalo, WY. Below, project members on the porch, and geophones on the porch.

In the field: installing geophones:

Over the course of four weeks, between 800 and 1850 small, high-frequency seismometers or geophones known as "Texans" were deployed at a spacing of 0.5 - 1 km along five transects (see Project Design). Earlier in the summer, a crew of surveyors put a pinflag at each Texan location to help our deployers.

Above: looking for pinflags in prarie grass.

Left: University of Colorado PI Anne Sheehan buries a Texan geophone. The data logger is bagged and also buried to reduce temperature fluctuations inside the unit. This seismometer is powered by two D-cell batteries.

Clockwise from top left: Keri Bean (TAMU) is a Texan installing a Texan in the Bighorns; swapping out D-call batteries from dataloggers; Morgan McDonnell (CU) makes a call on the Geo-Phone; a box of geophones. Texan geophones are installed vertically in the ground, stake down. The black cord connects to the battery-powered data logger, which digitallly records the seismic noise heard by the geophone.

In the field: active source:

In mid-July, 1850 Texan seismometers were deployed to record vibrations from 24 charges. Clockwise from top left: project participants "stem" a shothole; "Danger, vertical shaft!!"; UTEP PI Steve Harder prepares for a shot; and students hope to feel surface waves. The charges are detonated at night because ambient noise around the seismometers is minimal.