Seafloor Fiber Optic Array in Monterey Bay (SEAFOAM)

海洋覆盖了地球表面的70%，但水下环境受到通道、异常高的成本和复杂的物流的限制。然而，水下测量对于近海地震灾害、海啸和地震预警、海底火山科学以及地壳和地球深层成像至关重要。到目前为止探索的进入海底的战略需要昂贵的实地活动，包括几天到几周的船期，以及对电缆节点、船只或仪表池的长期管理。很难想象任何监测全球海底的战略都会升级。光纤传感为在近海进行高分辨率海底测量和解决以其他方式无法解决的科学问题提供了一条新的有希望的途径。继最近在近海成功的短期实验之后，本研究计划在加利福尼亚州蒙特利湾利用蒙特利加速研究系统(MARS)电缆在海洋环境中开发第一个连续运行的分布式声学传感(DAS)实验。蒙特利湾光纤阵列海底地震学项目将演示、校准、使用和扩大光纤传感在海洋地球物理中的能力，包括通过发布开放获取数据来扩大DAS用户群体。该项目包括一项为期一年的火星电缆实验，目的是记录地震，并扩展我们对环境地震背景波场记录间隔的知识，包括几个潮汐、风暴和季节性周期。该项目还将提供一个软硬件系统，该系统将为连续、实时、开放的DAS数据流向地震数据档案提供一个范例路径。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The ocean covers 70% of the surface of our planet, but the underwater environment is limited by access and by exceptionally high costs and complex logistics. Yet, underwater measurements are crucial for offshore seismic hazard, tsunami and earthquake early warning, submarine volcano science, and crustal and deep earth imaging. Strategies explored so far to access the seafloor require expensive field campaigns, including several days to weeks of ship time, and long-term management either of cabled nodes, ships, or instrument pools. Upscaling any strategy to monitor the seafloor worldwide is difficult to envision. Fiber-optic sensing provides a novel promising avenue for making high-resolution seafloor measurements offshore and tackling the scientific questions that cannot be answered otherwise.Following recent short-time successful experiments offshore, this research proposes to develop the first continuously operating Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) experiment in a marine environment using the Monterey Accelerated Research System (MARS) cable in Monterey Bay, CA. The Seafloor seismology with a Fiber-Optic Array in Monterey Bay (SEAFOAM) project will demonstrate, calibrate, use, and expand the capabilities of fiber-optic sensing in marine geophysics, including growing the DAS user community through release of open access data. The project consists of a 1-year experiment with the MARS cable in order to record earthquakes, and extend our knowledge of the ambient seismic background wavefield recording interval over several tidal, storm, and seasonal cycles. This project will also deliver a software-hardware system that will provide an example pathway for continuous, real-time, open DAS data streaming to a seismological data archive.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.