ALBERT

Beschreibung: The German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ operates a satellite-receiving station at Ny-Ålesund, Spitsbergen since 2001. Valuable support for several satellite missions was provided by the station on a best effort basis, while technical and software related issues, as well as uncertainties regarding important system properties, hindered any project participations with more binding commitments. The upcoming US-German GRACE-Follow On satellite mission with on-board GNSS-RO and gravity measurements and subsequent “near real-time” respectively low latency processing chains raised the demand to integrate the Ny-Ålesund station as the primary data receiving station of the mission’s ground segment. This required the demonstration of improved station performance and reliability with a perspective of sustainability as well as the determination of important antenna system parameters, such as the ratio of antenna gain to system noise (G/T). Analysis of receiving problems at the station in the past and considerations on methods to determine the station antennas characteristics suggested that improved antenna operation software was the most important and straightforward element on the planned way. Disappointing experiences with antenna operation programs of third parties, e.g., from shortcomings of functions, flexibility and support, indicated that the effort for an in-house development would pay off. Consequently new software for the semi-automatic operation of the antennas at the satellite receiving station at Ny-Ålesund was developed within this work. Main development objectives were the elimination of antenna operation problems which occurred in the past, to improve the station reliability, and to introduce program features for the support of required antenna measurements, e.g., such that use the sun as a natural radio signal source. Other focal points during the development were the program-internal timing routines, a compact, informative and operation-safe graphical user interface (GUI) and advanced operation logging features. Lessons learned by the operation of software from other parties in the years since 2001 were respected and even some hardware related issues with the antenna systems at Ny-Ålesund were solved by means of the new software. The new software “NYA-Sattrack” provides all required and desired functions, including some unconventional features. One example is the option to use two different external satellite orbit prediction programs and two sets of prediction elements (twoline elements). An operator can switch between the corresponding pass predictions at any time, even during a satellite contact with already moving antenna. This might be useful, e.g., in a Launch and Early Orbit Phase (LEOP), when different predictions from different sources and with uncertain quality have to be used. Another example is the generation of graphical logs for each satellite contact. An operator can check these logs very fast and simultaneously with normal, text-based logs through a built-in log-viewer function. An eventually desired adaptation to other antenna system types with different technical properties is explicitly supported by the software design as all antenna-specific program code is allocated to individual software interface modules (Dynamic Link Libraries). The new program “NYA-GPS-SYNC” maintains the accuracy of the antenna operation computer clock to support precise operation timing. The two different antenna positioning systems (Elevation over Azimuth and X over Y) of the satellite-receiving station at Ny-Ålesund are operated routinely with NYA-Sattrack since July 2014 and each of the antennas tracks more than 25 satellite passes per day. The number of outages related to antenna operation issues and the manual effort for the operation of the antennas has decreased significantly since introduction of NYA-Sattrack. The new program features of NYA-Sattrack, e.g., such as the sun-tracking mode combined with scan modes, strongly supported the determination of important antenna system characteristics and the detection of a source of radio interference. All achievements of this work have a benefit for supported missions, e.g., due to a better knowledge about technical boundary conditions for contact planning and less data losses during data reception. NYA-Sattrack significantly improved the reliability, efficiency and sustainability to support current and future satellite missions and the Ny-Ålesund ground station is ready to work as the primary downlink station for the GRACE-FO mission, due for launch in February 2018.

Beschreibung: Das Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum GFZ betreibt seit 2001 eine Satelliten-Empfangsstation bei Ny-Ålesund auf Spitzbergen. Die Station hat, so gut es ging, wertvolle Dienste für etliche Satellitenmissionen geleistet. Verbindliche Verpflichtungen in Projekten konnten aber, wegen hard- und softwaretechnischer Probleme und den nur unsicher bekannten Leistungsparametern der Station, nicht eingegangen werden. Die aufkommende US-amerikanisch-deutsche GRACE-Follow On Satellitenmission für GNSS-RO- und Schwerefeldmessungen und die sich daran anschließenden nahe-Echtzeit Datenverarbeitungsketten führten zu dem Wunsch, die Ny-Ålesund Station als primäre Empfangsstation im Bodensegment der Mission zu integrieren. Dies erforderte den Nachweis von verbesserten Betriebseigenschaften, sowie verbesserter Betriebszuverlässigkeit und Zukunftssicherheit, und die Bestimmung wichtiger Antennenparameter, wie dem Verhältnis von Antennengewinn zu Systemrauschen (G/T). Analysen zu Empfangsproblemen an der Station in der Vergangenheit und Überlegungen zur Bestimmung der Antennencharakteristika legten nahe, dass der wichtigste und direkteste Schritt auf diesem Weg eine verbesserte Software für den Betrieb der Antennen sein würde. Wegen in verschiedener Hinsicht enttäuschenden Erfahrungen mit Antennenbetriebssoftware von Dritten, z.B. wegen unzureichenden Funktionen und mangelnder Flexibilität und Unterstützung, wurde angenommen, dass sich der Aufwand für eine eigene Programmentwicklung auszahlen würde. Infolgedessen wurde mit dieser Arbeit eine neue Software für den halb-automatischen Betrieb der Antennen an der Satelliten-Empfangsstation Ny-Ålesund entwickelt. Die wichtigsten Punkte dabei waren die Lösung der in der Vergangenheit beobachteten Betriebsprobleme mit den Antennen, bzw. die Verbesserung der Zuverlässigkeit der Station, und Funktionen für Messungen an und mit den Antennen, z.B. mit Nutzung der Sonne als natürliche Quelle für Radiosignale. Andere Schwerpunkte der Entwicklung waren die zeitlichen Abläufe im Programm, eine kompakte, informative und betriebssichere graphische Nutzerschnittstelle (GUI) und erweiterte Möglichkeiten zum Protokollieren (Loggen) des Betriebs. Dabei wurden die seit 2001 mit dem Betrieb von extern beschaffter Software gemachten Erfahrungen berücksichtigt und sogar durch Hardware verursachte Probleme beim Betrieb der Antennen in Ny-Ålesund durch die neue Software gelöst. Das neue Programm „NYA-Sattrack“ stellt alle benötigten und gewünschten Funktionen bereit, inklusive einiger ungewöhnlicher Funktionen. Ein Beispiel ist die Möglichkeit zur Nutzung von zwei unterschiedlichen externen Programmen zur Bahnvorhersage mit unterschiedlichen Bahnelementen (twoline elements). Ein Operator kann so jederzeit zwischen den beiden entsprechenden Bahnvorhersagen wechseln, sogar während eines Satellitenkontakts mit sich bereits bewegenden Antennen. Dies könnte z.B. in der ersten Zeit nach einem Satellitenstart nützlich sein, wenn unterschiedliche Bahnberechnungen mit unsicherer Genauigkeit von unterschiedlichen Quellen verwendet werden müssen. Ein anderes Beispiel ist die Erzeugung graphischer Logs für die einzelnen Satellitenkontakte. Diese Logs lassen sich von einem Operator sehr schnell überprüfen, durch eine integrierte Anzeigefunktion sogar zusammen mit den textbasierten Logdateien. Eine möglicherweise gewünschte Anpassung des Programms für andere Antennen mit unterschiedlichen Betriebseigenschaften wird dadurch unterstützt, dass antennenspezifischer Programmcode in Programmerweiterungen (Dynamic Link Libraries) platziert wurde. Das neue Programm “NYA-GPS-SYNC” kontrolliert die Uhr des Computers für die Antennensteuerung und sorgt so für einen zeitlich präzisen Betrieb. Die beiden unterschiedlichen Antennenpositionierungssysteme an der Satelliten- Empfangsstation Ny-Ålesund (Elevation über Azimut und X über Y) werden seit Juli 2014 routinemäßig mit NYA-Sattrack betrieben. Jede der beiden Antennen bedient mehr als 25 Satellitenkontakte pro Tag. Seit der Einführung von NYA-Sattrack haben betriebsbedingte Ausfälle stark abgenommen, ebenso der manuelle Aufwand zum Betrieb der Antennen. Die neuen Funktionen von NYA-Sattrack, wie z.B. das Verfolgen der Sonne mit einer Antenne in Kombination mit speziellen Bewegungsmustern, haben die Bestimmung wichtiger Antennenparameter und das Erkennen einer funktechnischen Störquelle ermöglicht. Alle erzielten Ergebnisse nützen indirekt auch den unterstützten Missionen, z.B. durch bessere Kenntnis der technischen Randbedingungen für die Planung von Kontakten und geringere Datenverluste beim Datenempfang. NYA-Sattrack hat die Zuverlässigkeit, Effektivität und Nachhaltigkeitsperspektive der Station für die Unterstützung aktueller und zukünftiger Satellitenmissionen stark verbessert, so dass diese nun für den geplanten Einsatz als primäre Empfangsstation für GRACE-FO bereit ist (geplanter Start im Februar 2018).

Beschreibung: This brochure is designed for scientists and engineers of upcoming drilling projects and explains the key steps and important challenges in planning and executing continental scientific drilling.

Beschreibung: The airborne laser scanning (ALS) datasets were acquired at the Arctic tundra site of Trail Valley Creek (TVC), Northwest Territories, Canada, which is underlain by continuous permafrost. Basic processing and filtering steps were applied to the ALS point cloud. Based on a classification into ground and vegetation points, a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) and rasters of mean and maximum vegetation heights are derived. Detailed metadata are included.

Beschreibung: The processing of Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PSI) data and the estimation of displacement is a nonlinear and user-driven procedure that can introduce large errors for noisy backscatter points. Results may differ significantly depending on chosen thresholds, filter settings, constraints and final interpretation. Thus the identification of valid PS with rather low errors in the SAR data is a crucial step in the PSI workflow. PSI-Explorer is a scientific prototype of our visual-analytics (VA) approach supporting this important task. The prototype is written in Java and operates on Matlab files.

Beschreibung: The consequences of climate change are highly important in the polar regions as ice-sheets and glaciers respond strongly to change in average temperature. The analysis of seismic signals (icequakes) emitted by glaciers (i.e., cryo-seismology) is thus gaining importance as a tool for monitoring glacier activity. To understand the scaling relation between regional glacier-related seismicity and actual small-scale local glacier dynamics and to calibrate the identified classes of icequakes to locally observed waveforms, a temporary passive seismic monitoring experiment was conducted in the vicinity of the calving front of Kronebreen, one of the fastest tidewater glaciers on Svalbard (Fig. 1). By combining the local observations with recordings of the nearby GEOFON station GE.KBS, the local experiment provides an ideal link between local observations at the glacier to regional scale monitoring of NW Spitsbergen. During the 4-month operation period from May to September 2013, eight broadband seismometers and three 4-point short-period arrays were operating around the glacier front of Kronebreen.

Beschreibung: The 3D geomechanical-numerical modelling of the in-situ stress state requires observed stress information at reference locations within the model area to be compared to the modelled stress state. This comparison of stress states and the ensuing adaptation of the displacement boundary conditions provide a best fit stress state in the entire model region that is based on the available stress information. This process is also referred to as calibration. Depending on the amount of available information and the complexity of the model the calibration is a lengthy process of trial-and-error modelling and analysis. The Fast Automatic Stress Tensor Calibration (FAST Calibration) is a method and a Matlab script that facilitates and speeds up the calibration process. The method requires only three model scenarios with different boundary conditions. The modelled stress states at the locations of the observed stress state are extracted. Then they are used to compute the displacement boundary conditions that are required in order to achieve the best fit of the modelled to the observed stress state. Furthermore, the influence of the individual observed stress information on the resulting stress state can be weighted.

Beschreibung: On a beautiful summer day Emma and Steven want to have fun at their favourite lake. However, a mysterious situation thwarts their plans. This leads the two friends on an unexpected quest ... Join Emma and Steven as they explore the vast, intriguing and efficient world of stable isotopes: What are isotopes? How do isotopes work? And last but not least, how can isotopes help Emma and Steven to finally answer the question: Who poisoned Family Mole?

Beschreibung: The German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) has been established after the devastating Tsunami in the Indian Ocean on December 26, 2004. It became an integral part of the Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (InaTEWS) providing sensor networks and core computational components. GITEWS follows an “end-to-end” approach to cover the complete warning chain from rapid hazard detection over decision support to capacity development of communities at risk and the implementation of disaster reduction measures. PROTECTS (Project for Training, Education and Consulting for Tsunami Early Warning Systems) followed GITEWS with its main focus on system refinements, capacity building, and elaborated training measures that covered all aspects of the GITEWS Project. This paper discusses the specific challenges of Tsunami Early Warning in Indonesia, describes recent developments in instrumentation and data analysis and summarizes the system performance over the past 5 years.

Beschreibung: Preface 5Abstract 101. Introduction 102. Instrumentation 132.1 Seismic System 142.2 The GPS-System 182.3 Oceanographic Instruments 203. The Modelling-System 223.1 Source Modelling 233.2 TsunAWI Modelling System 243.3 Mesh Generation 263.4 Simulation System (SIM) 283.5 “On-the-fly”-System easyWave 324. Tsunami Early Warning Decision Support 334.1 The InaTEWS DSS 334.2 Experiences and Enhancements 374.3 Testing and Training Environment 385. System Performance 396. Tsunami Risk Assessment – Linking National Level Early Warning with Local Level Disaster Risk Reduction 436.1 The Approach: From Science to Practical Implementation 436.2 Multi-Scenario Tsunami Hazard Assessment 456.3 High Resolution Tsunami Inundation Modelling for Hazard Assessment 476.4 Exposure and Vulnerability Assessment 486.5 Tsunami Risk Assessment 486.6 Experiences and Enhancements 497. Tsunami Preparedness at Community Level - Experiences from 7 Years of Capacity Development in Indonesia 507.1 The Setting 517.2 Our Experiences 517.3 Project Documentation: TsunamiKit 588. Conclusions 58Acknowledgements 60References 61

Beschreibung: Length: 1 min

Beschreibung: This brochure is designed for scientists and engineers of upcoming drilling projects and explains the key steps and important challenges in planning and executing continental scientific drilling.

Beschreibung: Length: 0.5 min

Beschreibung: Raw-, SEG-Y and other supplementary data of the landside deployment from the amphibious wide-angle seismic experiment ALPHA are presented. The aim of this project was to reveal the crustal and lithospheric structure of the subducting Adriatic plate and the external accretionary wedge in the southern Dinarides. Airgun shots from the RV Meteor were recorded along two profiles across Montenegro and northern Albania.

Beschreibung: Length: 1 min

Beschreibung: Length: 1 min

Beschreibung: The movie features the workshop for primary school children "Geochemical Treasure Hunt". Length: 6:37 min

Beschreibung: A temporary seismic array of short-period seismometers was installed in the 8-story AHEPA hospital, located in the city of Thessaloniki, N. Greece. The scope of the survey was to assess the dynamic characteristics of the RC-building by processing ambient vibration recordings of more than 40 seismic stations installed at different positions in the building. Part of the instruments was used in a soil experiment, outside of the hospital, to study possible Soil Structure Interaction phenomena. In addition to above experiments, a site-specific survey was performed in the Volvi basin, 30km ENE of the city of Thessaloniki. The scope of this experiment was to investigate the soil properties and the geometry of the subsurface geology.

Beschreibung: LITHOS-CAPP is the German contribution to the international ScanArray experiment. ScanArray is an array of broadband seismometers with which we aim to study the lithosphere and upper mantle beneath the Scandinavian Mountains and the Baltic Shield. LITHOS-CAPP contributed 20 broadband recording stations from September 2014 to October 2016, 10 in Sweden and 10 in Finland, continuously recordings at 100 samples per second. The stations were deployed by the KIT Geophysical Institute and GFZ section 2.4 (seismology). They form part of the temporary network ScanArrayCore (FDSN network code 1G 2012-2017)

Beschreibung: The Scientific Technical Report describes supplementary material to the publication by Grünthal et al. (2018) on the earthquake model for the probabilistic seismic hazard assessment (PSHA) of Germany, version 2016. In particular, it contains detailed information, additional figures, tables and electronic data concerning seismicity, seismic source zone models, maximum magnitudes, seismicity rates of the seismic source zones, model data related to distributions of focal depth and tectonic regime parameters. It also supplies seismic hazard maps for Germany with a broad range of parametrizations.

Beschreibung: Engineering seismological models (incl. ground amplification and topographic effects) of key structures in Tiryns and Midea, Greece, will be used to test the hypothesis of seismogenic causes of the decline of the Mycenaean settlements in the 12th century BC.

Beschreibung: The GEOFON program consists of a global seismic network (GE Network), a seismological data centre (GEOFON DC) and a global earthquake monitoring system (GEOFON EQinfo). These three pillars are part of the MESI research infrastructure of the Helmholtz Centre Potsdam - GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences aiming at facilitating scientific research. GEOFON provides real-time seismic data, access to its own and third party data from the archive facilities as well as global and rapid earthquake information. The GEOFON Seismological Software can be considered a fourth cross-cutting module of the GEOFON Program. Data, services, products and software openly distributed by GEOFON are used by hundreds of scientists and data centres worldwide. Its earthquake information service is accessed directly by tens of thousands of visitors. The SeisComP software package is the flagship software provided to the community, which is geared for seismic observatory and data centre needs and used extensively to support our internal operations. Like all other MESI (Modular Earth Science Infrastructure) modules GEOFON has the majority of users outside the GFZ as well as an external advisory committee that provides advice to the GFZ Executive Board and to the GEOFON team. This report describes the main activities carried out within the three GEOFON pillars and the software development group.

Beschreibung: Hyperspectral airborne campaigns have been carried out in the frame of the data exploitation and application development program of the German Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP) to support method and application development in the prelaunch phase of the EnMAP satellite mission. A metadata portal (EnMAP Campaign Portal) has been set up providing general information about the campaigns, recorded airborne hyperspectral data sets, other data associated to the respective campaigns like field and laboratory measurements and a number of field guides for in-situ data acquisition. Furthermore, it informs about the availability of simulated EnMAP and Sentinel-2 data for the respective campaign region. The data listed in the EnMAP Campaign Portal is freely available under a Creative Commons License as DOI-referenced data publications.

Beschreibung: This publication is a result of the 15th TRACE conference „Tree Rings in Archaeology, Climatologyand Ecology” organized by the University of Silesia, Silesian Botanical Garden, University ofWrocław, Forest Research Institute and Białowieża National Park. The conference was held onMay 11th – 15th, 2016 in Białowieża, Poland, in the heart of the Białowieża Forest, the last naturalforest in the European Lowlands, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Biosphere Reserve. University Pablo de Olavide (UPO) and the Association for Tree-ring Research (ATR), in collaboration with Pyrenean Institute of Ecology-Spanish National Research Council (IPE-CSIC), University of Barcelona (UB), Forest and Wood Technology Research Centre (CETEMAS) and University of Valladolid (UVa). The TRACE 2015 conference was held on May 20-23, 2015 for the first time in the Iberian Peninsula, in Sevilla, Spain.

Beschreibung: Length: 15 min

Beschreibung: A major uncertainty in determining the mass balance of the Antarctic ice sheet from measurements of satellite gravimetry, and to a lesser extent satellite altimetry, is the poorly known correction for the ongoing deformation of the solid Earth caused by glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA). In the past decade, much progress has been made in consistently modelling the ice sheet and solid Earth interactions; however, forward-modelling solutions of GIA in Antarctica remain uncertain due to the sparsity of constraints on the ice sheet evolution, as well as the Earth's rheological properties. An alternative approach towards estimating GIA is the joint inversion of multiple satellite data - namely, satellite gravimetry, satellite altimetry and GPS, which reflect, with different sensitivities, trends of recent glacial changes and GIA. Crucial to the success of this approach is the accuracy of the space-geodetic data sets. Here, we present reprocessed rates of surface-ice elevation change (Envisat/ICESat; 2003-2009), gravity field change (GRACE; 2003-2009) and bedrock uplift (GPS; 1995-2013). The data analysis is complemented by the forward-modelling of viscoelastic response functions to disc load forcing, allowing us to relate GIA-induced surface displacements with gravity changes for different rheological parameters of the solid Earth. The data and modelling results presented here form the basis for the joint inversion estimate of present-day ice-mass change and GIA in Antarctica. This paper presents the first of two contributions summarizing the work carried out within a European Space Agency funded study, REGINA.

Beschreibung: Hyperspectral airborne campaigns have been carried out in the frame of the data exploitation and application development program of the German Environmental Mapping and Analysis Program (EnMAP) to support method and application development in the prelaunch phase of the EnMAP satellite mission. A metadata portal (EnMAP Campaign Portal) has been set up providing general information about the campaigns, recorded airborne hyperspectral data sets, other data associated to the respective campaigns like field and laboratory measurements and a number of field guides for in-situ data acquisition. Furthermore, it informs about the availability of simulated EnMAP and Sentinel-2 data for the respective campaign region. The data listed in the EnMAP Campaign Portal is freely available under a Creative Commons License as DOI-referenced data publications.

Beschreibung: Earthquake focal mechanism solutions (FMS) form the basic data input for many applications, e.g. stress tensor inversion or ground-motion prediction equation estimation. In these applications the FMS data is usually binned spatially or in predetermined ranges of rake and dip based on expert elicitation. However, due to the significant increase of FMS data in the past decade an objective data-driven cluster analysis is now possible. Here we present the method ACE (Angular Classification with Expectation-Maximization) that identities clusters of FMS without a priori information. The identified clusters can be used for the classification of the Style-of- Faulting and as weights for FMS data binning in the aforementioned applications. As an application example we use ACE to identify FMS clusters according to their Style-of- Faulting that are related to certain earthquake types (e.g. subduction interface) in northern Chile, the Nazca Plate and in Kyushu (Japan). We use the resulting clusters and weights as a priori information for a stress tensor inversion for these regions and show that uncertainties of the stress tensor estimates are reduced significantly.