Funding through this Cooperative Agreement will support the continued management and operation of the UNAVCO Global Positioning System (GPS) and geodetic technology support facility over a five year period. The UNAVCO Facility is managed by UNAVCO, Inc. (hereafter referred to as UNAVCO), a non-profit corporation governed by a Board of Directors elected by the UNAVCO membership comprised predominantly of U.S. academic institutions with active research programs in geodesy. There are currently over 100 member institutions. The UNAVCO mission is to advance high precision techniques for the measurement of crustal deformation. The Facility is supported by NSF Division of Earth Sciences, Office of Polar Programs and NASA (through annual agency transfers) for responsibilities including: 1) maintenance of a pool of state-of-the-art GPS equipment available to NSF-supported scientists; 2) provision of personnel dedicated to NSF and NASA funded GPS and geodetic technologies project planning, logistics and field engineering support; 3) maintenance of the NASA Global GPS Network (GGN) that provides crucial data to the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) needed for International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF) solutions; 4) development and maintenance of a GPS data archive; 5) planning and coordination of various geodetic community activities (e.g., scientific workshops, steering committee meetings); 6) development and evaluation of new commercial GPS technology; 7) ensuring a representative and responsive governance process on behalf of the U.S. academic research community using precision geodetic techniques; and 8) provision of education and outreach to students and the public about precision geodetic research applications, the Earth sciences, and UNAVCO. Funding provides salary support for a staff of over 25 full time scientists, engineers and associated business support staff. Dense GPS observations in space and time have resulted in fundamental new discoveries in the Earth sciences that have had a significant impact on our understanding of the Earth system and the complex interplays between the Earth's interior dynamics, tectonic, magmatic, seismic and surface processes, and the global climate system. Observations of the surface Earth are inherently societally relevant. The UNAVCO Facility makes key contributions to the science and public policy enterprise through facilitating advances in understanding and responding to seismic, volcanic and coastal margin hazards and the effects of climate dynamics on the Earth's cryosphere and hydrosphere. Facility benefits to the science community and society extend beyond U.S. borders. The Facility supports international research in geodesy and technology transfer to developing countries. UNAVCO Facility support is beginning to make an impact outside of the Earth sciences, including support for real-time kinematic GPS studies to characterize the dynamics of major flexible civil engineering structures such as bridges. Facility education and outreach programs stimulate technological training and increased diversity in student participation in the geosciences that enhance U.S. competitiveness in the global technology economy.
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UNAVCO is a non-profit, university-governed consortium that facilitates geoscience research and education using geodesy. UNAVCO supports a community that includes scientists affiliated with 106 US academic Member universities and 91 Associate Member institutions. This community is active and productive in many areas of Earth Science, including, but not limited to solid earth science, polar science, atmospheric sciences, and hydrogeodesy. UNAVCO has the unique and fundamental role of providing solid Earth and cryospheric scientists with free access to a pooled resource of geodetic technologies, instruments, equipment, data, technical support and collaboration, which are key enablers of fundamental Earth Science research being conducted from the equator to the poles. UNAVCO-supported scientific research by the community has resulted in more than 6,000 peer-reviewed scholarly papers. UNAVCO also facilitated community collaborations via three Science Workshops during the award period where scientific results were shared and future science pathways were developed. UNAVCO provided two primary services: instrumentation and engineering services to Principal Investigators, and data services to the science community. UNAVCO supported 954 projects with researchers at more than 114 unique institutions. The UNAVCO Data Center provides a secure, long-term archive for collected data along with tools that add value to the data and products in the archive. Data from 2,500+ permanent GPS stations worldwide are archived at UNAVCO and available to researchers and the public. The UNAVCO Facility provided resources to EarthScope, an NSF program that deploys thousands of seismic, GPS, and other geophysical instruments to study the structure and evolution of the North American continent and the processes the cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The UNAVCO Facility contributed to the maintainance and operation of the Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO). PBO includes a network of more than 1,100 permanent, continuous GPS stations and 78 borehole geophysics observing systems that span the US. Observing stations are concentrated in the west – where deformation in response to earthquakes, fault motions, volcanoes, and seasonal loading of surface and ground water – is most prevalent. Under the Facility award, UNAVCO provided EarthScope campaign support through testing, maintaining, improving, and shipping the GPS systems for EarthScope research projects, primarily related to PBO. UNAVCO provided oversight of the EarthScope geodetic imagery program, including the collection of airborne LiDAR topography data and development of a SAR data archive for interferometry analysis. With NASA funding, UNAVCO and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory manage the International Global Navigation Systems Satellite (GNSS) Service Central Bureau and operates the NASA Global GNSS Network. UNAVCO supported development and testing of hardware, firmware and software including GPS receivers, antennas, data communications, power systems, and the development of new instrumentation. Immediately following the 2010 M8.8 Maule earthquake, UNAVCO staff led the effort to determine whether satellite and/or cellular data services could be both technically feasible and cost effective in the affected area in Chile and Argentina. As a result of this effort data were immediately accessible from remote areas in the affected region and communications techniques developed that were implemented in future projects. UNAVCO provided polar research support in both the Antarctic and Arctic, covering a wide range of disciplines including glaciology, geophysics, geology, volcanology, biology, anthropology, and archeology. Services provided included laser and GPS instrumentation, training, project planning, field engineering, proposal assistance, technical consultation, data processing, and data archiving. Earth science investigations increasingly require accurate representation of the Earth surface using three-dimensional data capture, display, and analysis at a centimeter scale to quantitatively characterize and model complex processes. Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) is a technique ideally suited to this need. UNAVCO developed a program to provide TLS engineering support for research projects as well as community outreach and training. UNAVCO also pioneered support for TLS use at geologic field camps, critical for educating the next generation of earth scientists. UNAVCO supported the Western North America InSAR (WInSAR) Consortium, a community organized to facilitate collaboration in, and advancement of, Earth science research using radar remote sensing. UNAVCO supported the WInSAR community with data ordering and data distribution support. During this award period, 5,6oo+ GB of SAR data were archived for WInSAR, and 11,000+ GB of data were downloaded from the archive. An additional 7,600 GB of EarthScope SAR data were downloaded from the archive. The impact of UNAVCO supported work is broad. More than 4,100 interactions between UNAVCO staff and a broad community of stakeholders occurred during the award period. UNAVCO hosted over 30 technical short courses where more than 730 researchers and graduate students received professional development in data processing and analysis. Twenty-seven education workshops provided over 1,980 secondary teachers and college faculty with tools and knowledge to integrate GPS and related data into their classes. UNAVCO’s social media program involves UNAVCO staff through the Facebook, Twitter, and You Tube channels engaging with over 3,000 individuals annually.
