In this project, a system will be developed to monitor the state of the magnetosphere by abstracting geophysically significant information from nighside energetic particle precipitation measured by detectors on the DMSP spacecraft. This work follows similar work successfully accomplished on dayside precipitation data and quite extensively utilized by the space science community. The system will be automated using quantitative algorithms and will determine (1) the "zero energy" convection boundary (often the plasma pause), (2) the point where the large scale gradient in the electron average energy vs latitude changes from positive to negative (the start of the main plasma sheet), (3) the ion high- energy precipitation cutoff, (the start of the tail current sheet), (4) the stable trapping boundary for greater that 35 KeV electrons (also a marker for the start of the tail current sheet), as well as a variety of other parameters of geophysical significance. These various parameters will be investigated to produce indices which may be used to characterize the magnetosphere with more accuracy than do the present indices such as Kp and AE.
