An integral component of the multi-agency U.S. Global Change Research Program (Our Changing Planet," Committee on Earth Sciences, 1991) is understanding and modeling the geospace environment. As part of its contribution to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, the National Science Foundation's Division of Atmospheric Sciences has established a new research initiative, Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM), with the goal of supporting basic research into the dynamical and structural properties of geospace, leading to the construction of a global geospace model with predictive capability. The subjects of the first GEM campaign are the magnetospheric boundary, the magnetosheath beyond it, and the connection from the boundary through the magnetosphere to the ionosphere. This grant is for support to deploy an array of magnetometers at cusp/cleft latitudes in a joint effort with Augsburg College. The purpose of the array is to study ionospheric waves associated with the magnetospheric cusp and neighboring regions. In association with the radar system that will be operating in the same area, this magnetometer array will provide high time resolution, two-dimensional data in the electrodynamics of cusp convection.
