[Next] [Previous] [Contents]
5.0 Support to Office of Polar Programs
The 1995/96 Antarctica field season was the first that the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs directly funded UNAVCO (Technical Event T-545) to provide full scale high precision differential GPS support to the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). A total of 15 Polar Program Science and Technical Events, encompassing a range of applications, were supported throughout the field season. Post season support (primarily data reduction) was also provided to several projects. Although pre-season planning was somewhat limited due to the late agreement on funding, project planning, equipment preparation, and grantee training were conducted before deployment.
Thirteen GPS receivers from the UNAVCO pool (six owned by Polar Programs) were provided for support throughout the field season - nine Trimble SSE/SSi and four TurboRogue SNR8000 receivers. The TurboRogue receivers were dedicated to Science Event S-098 for the entire season and were not available to other investigators. The Trimble receivers were used on the remaining projects, typically with three receivers per project. Antarctic Support Associates (ASA) also provided two Trimble SE receivers, managed by UNAVCO as necessary, which were used by S-078 and T-531.
UNAVCO field engineer, Bjorn Johns, was based at McMurdo Station, the logistics hub for all GPS-supported projects, during the entire season. A second field engineer, Barb Perin, was present during the busiest time from mid-December through January. The field engineers provided direct field assistance to projects, repaired and tested equipment between field campaigns, provided miscellaneous technical support throughout the season, processed the data from most field projects, and provided data archiving support. They also provided new operator training and refresher training sessions for those who had been trained at the UNAVCO Boulder Facility or had previous GPS experience. The level of data processing support was substantially increased this season which significantly reduced the data processing burden for scientists not experienced with GPS data processing.
UNAVCO support began with an initial assessment of Support Information Package (SIP) requests to determine the resources required to adequately support the field season. Due to funding uncertainties, UNAVCO did not begin to address these requests until August 1995. Although this resulted in some uncertainty with investigators regarding the level of available GPS resources, full support was provided to all projects that had submitted GPS support request SIPs and still required GPS support when contacted in August. At McMurdo Station, additional project support requests were met on a resource available basis.
- 5.1 Project Support
- 5.2 Off-Season Support
- 5.3 Recommendations for Future Support
- 5.4 Preliminary Support Schedule for 1996/1997 Season
- 5.5 Office of Polar Programs Support Staff and Budget
1996 Annual Report - 25 SEP 1997
Last modified Tuesday, 08-Nov-2005 02:34:56 UTC