Under the auspices of EarthScope, the Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO) will bring about an unprecedented expansion of crustal motion and crustal strain monitoring within the North American Cordillera over the next 5 years. The role to be carried out by UNAVCO will be critical, focussed not only on hardware and software support, but also on training and education. Some of the specific tasks that I foresee for UNAVCO include the following. At the outset, UNAVCO should be the agency responsible for GPS system (receiver & antenna) acquisition and testing, thereby ensuring uniform quality for all systems. UNAVCO must also be able to provide support for the operation and maintenance of deployed systems and serve as the broker for any servicing and repair required to be carried out by the manufacturer. Robust, timely, automated data communications and data quality checking will be essential, and in order to ease the burden on researchers, as well as to minimize duplication of effort, UNAVCO should provide tested communication schemes and up-to-date data quality check software for various platforms, either developed in-house or garnered from other agencies. I also see UNAVCO taking on a key role in the establishment and proliferation of "seamless" data archives across the greatly expanded GPS-user community, and in the establishment of metadata standards. The scope of the PBO undertaking will demand training and educating of the many by the few. UNAVCO must provide (or facilitate) training for system installation & set-up, system control & operation, and simple system troubleshooting. Through short courses, workshops, establishment of working groups, web-based forums, etc., UNAVCO should endeavour to educate researchers on not just the fundamentals of GPS technology, but help them to focus on specific problems (e.g. tropospheric models, phase centre calibrations, mitigation of multipathing, improved strategies for ambiguity resolution, etc.) In the execution of the outlined tasks, UNAVCO must take advantage of proven infrastructure and methodologies that exist in other organizations with common interests (IGS, NGS, IRIS, SCEC, JPL, SOPAC, various regional GPS networks, etc.)

In short, UNAVCO should provide the support which will help researchers to understand GPS technology and to utilize it astutely, with efficiency and innovation, in the pursuit of the scientific objectives expounded under the PBO initiative.

Herb Dragert Biography

Herb Dragert
Geological Survey of Canada
Pacific Geoscience Centre, Sidney, B.C.
http://www.pgc.nrcan.gc.ca/geodyn/people/hd_home.htm

Education:
1968 Hon. B.Sc. Mathematics & Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ont.
1970 M.Sc. Dept. of Geophysics & Astronomy, University of B.C., Vancouver, B.C.
1973 Ph.D. Dept. of Geophysics & Astronomy, University of B.C., Vancouver, B.C.
1974 PostDoc Institut fur Geophysik, Gottingen, Germany.

Employment:
1974-1976 Visiting Assistant Professor
Dept. of Geophysics & Astronomy, University of B.C., Vancouver, B.C.
1976-1978 Research Scientist I
Earth Physics Branch, Ottawa, Ont.
1978-2003 Research Scientist II, III
Geological Survey of Canada, Pacific Geoscience Centre, Sidney, B.C.
2001-2003 Adjunct Professor
School of Earth & Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, B.C.

Current GPS Related Functions:
- Science Manager of the Western Canada Deformation Array (WCDA)
- IGS Regional Network Operations Representative
- Canadian co-investigator on the IGS TIGA project
- Member of the SCIGN Advisory Council
- UNAVCO Associate Member Representative for the Geological Survey of Canada
- Executive Committee, Geodesy Section, Canadian Geophysical Union
- Liaison for Canadian PBO Initiatives

Since joining the Earth Physics Branch in 1976, I have been involved in crustal deformation studies on the west coast of Canada. My earliest research involved precise relative gravity measurements and levelling surveys across Vancouver Island to determine cross-margin tilting. During the 1980's, I led the work which established regional strain networks first with laser trilateration measurements and subsequently with GPS campaign measurements. This work resulted in the first horizontal strain estimates for the northern Cascadia margin, providing key constraints for the modeling of the locked subduction interface. During this period I was also a co-investigator on NASA's Crustal Dynamics Project which established VLBI measurements at Whitehorse, Yellowknife, and Penticton. In 1989, I was involved with the first Canadian test of a continuous GPS tracker which was set up at the Pacific Geoscience Centre. This pioneering work led to my proposing the establishment of the Western Canada Deformation Array (WCDA), the first Canadian regional continuous GPS network for the study of crustal deformation. The development of the WCDA network served as a key impetus for the establishment of the PANGA GPS network in Washington and Oregon, and provided the land-based platform for sea-floor motion studies off the coast of Vancouver Is. Over the past decade, I have been directly involved with all aspects of continuous GPS technology: the acquisition and evaluation of hardware; the installation of GPS tracking sites; the collection, processing, and analysis of continuous GPS data; and the modeling and interpretation of GPS-based crustal motions. Most recently I have led the Canadian studies of episodic slip on the deeper Cascadia plate interface.

Last modified Monday, 07-Nov-05 19:34:40

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