[IGSMAIL-2798]: New KODK site on Kodiak Island, Alaska

Dr Thomas A Clark clark at tomcat.gsfc.nasa.gov
Fri Apr 14 11:17:57 PDT 2000


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IGS Electronic Mail      14 Apr 11:18:00 PDT 2000      Message Number 2798
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Author: Jeanne Sauber and Tom Clark



We are pleased to announce the availability of data from a new IGS site
named KODK on Kodiak Island, Alaska. The site is located on the Kodiak
US Coast Guard Base, southwest of the city of Kodiak at coordinates

        X= -3027465.23       Y=-1575906.30        Z=5370078.01
        Lat= 57.735107    Long= -152.501375     Height:  37.89m

This location is ~600 meters southwest of the old (1984-90) Kodiak
mobile VLBI site which we subsequently used for summer GPS campaigns
1993-99. KODK overlooks St. Paul Harbor, Woman's Bay and the airstrips
used by the Coast Guard and Kodiak's municipal airport. It is ~22.5 km
from the KOD1 CORS DGPS site. The new KODK site was picked by Tom Clark
in March 1999.
           
The receiver is an Ashtech Z-XII3 with an Ashtech Choke Ring antenna and
radome. The permanent monument is a 10 inch diameter steel conduit
cylinder filled with concrete ~1.9 meters above ground. Mark Bryant and
Bob LeMoine of Ashtech's Reston, VA office installed the hardware in
Sept, 1999. The receiver is housed in a nearby Coast Guard building.
Some photos of Bob and Mark at work during the installation can be seen
at 

    ftp://tac.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/kodiak/index.htm

Paul Jamason and Yehuda Bock at SOPAC are handling data gathering and
archiving. SOPAC has archived data since Feb.8, 2000 (day 39). For
additional information, the KODK station log is on the SOPAC and IGSCB
web sites:

    http://lox.ucsd.edu/permanentGPSSites/   and click on IGS sites
    http://igscb.jpl.nasa.gov/network/site/kodk.html


Geophysical Background:  The Pacific plate is subducting beneath the
North American plate near Kodiak Island at a rate of about 5.9 cm/yr.
During the great 1964 Prince William Sound earthquake (M = 9.2), Kodiak
Island experienced subsidence of up to 1.8 m. The region below Kodiak
Island is a transition zone between plate interface slip in large
earthquakes, post-seismic creep, and aseismic creep at greater depths.
The new KODK GPS site is about 150 km from the Alaska-Aleutian trench.
Based on VLBI (1984-90) and GPS (1993-99) observations at the site 600 m
from KODK, the steady rate of deformation of this site (relative to
stable North America) is  ~1 cm/yr to the northwest. 

    -------------------------------------------------------------

KODK - A community educational facility: KODK is the latest step in the
program we described in the Aug.18, 1998 issue of EOS ("Educational
Outreach Strategy Involves K-12 Students in Earthquake Hazard Research")
with Alaska High School students as partners in scientific research.
Funding for the KODK hardware, monument construction and the development
of supporting educational curriculum was obtained through NASA/GSFC as
part of the Director's Discretionary Fund for Education and Outreach. 

Kodiak Island High School had adopted KODK as a school project and the
monument is now painted in the school colors. Science teacher Eric
Linscheid and his students assisted in the construction of KODK, plan to
monitor the site's integrity, and will be working with GSFC and SOPAC
researchers on student science and technology projects. The site's data
is currently being downloaded by phone by SOPAC, but automatic
dowloading will soon use computer resources at Kodiak Island High
School. This site will be used as a fiducial site for local geodetic
surveys (including the new Kodiak satellite launch facility) and for
local research studies being conducted with Kodiak resident scientist,
Dr. Gary Carver (Professor Emeritus, Humboldt State University). Some
photos of the Kodiak student activities can be seen at

     ftp://tac.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/kodiak/jms/index.htm


Jeanne Sauber and Tom Clark
Laboratory for Terrestrial Physics
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD 20771



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