Louis Quinones

July 12th, 2015

It's pretty shocking how fast the weeks have gone by and now I find myself heading into my final third part of my internship already at SMU. It has been a busy month and a half so far and now it's interesting to look back and see how much I've actually learned so far. A whole slew of new programs that I can now say I have at least a passable knowlege of and I haven't even begun to complete any of the double difference work yet on the Irving earthquakes. So far the plan is to continue to work on my internship programs for the next two weeks before transitioning into working on my AGU poster for the final week that I'm here at SMU. For the past week and a half I've been working on trying to tighten up the magnitude calculator we've been using to be a bit more in line with the USGS's calculations, although they're calculating magnitudes using regional instruments and were using our local arrays so some small discrepancy isn't the end of the world. Hopefully with Heather's help we can finally finish working on the calculator early next week so that we can do some more cross correlation and perhaps some double difference locations on the Irving events. Tomorrow the USGS is coming to Dallas for a few meetings including one here at SMU which I believe I'll be able to sit in at which is interesting. Overall these next couple of weeks are going to be busy so I'm hoping to go into this final stretch running and accomplish a lot in the little time I have left in my internship.

June 28th, 2015

It's been a couple weeks since I last posted a blog so before I get into talking about independence I think I should first talk about what I've been up to during that time. As before I'm still working in Antelope doing earthquake picks for the 3 instrument systems that SMU is currently running in Azle, Irving, and Venus Texas and I feel that I've gotten a pretty good handle on doing the picks myself with the help of the auto-detect that Heather set up beforehand. Over the next week I'll probably start looking over the waveforms more closely myself from the past month to see if I can locate some events that perhaps the auto-detect missed. 

I've also began my work into learning how to use GISMO which is a series of seismology oriented matlab scripts to do waveform cross correlation so that eventually I can use some double difference methods to better locate the earthquakes in the Irving sequence. The actual scripts themselves were acutally written by the previous IRIS intern Mason who worked here at SMU so its pretty interesting to see the work of someone who was in the same position I'm in now. Although, I do wish he had commented his codes a bit more as it was quite a pain trying to figure out what each line of code was actually doing by myself.

The software I'm most proud of myself for picking up though is GMT, I feel like I've really gotten a good understanding of the its basic features and with the help of the guides from the unix tutorials and a lot of help from Kevin who is one of the graduate students working under Heather. I always enjoyed learning new programs and coding languages, the feeling of all of a sudden being able to create new and interesting figures is a great one and on Monday I'll edit in some of the GMT's I've made.

Lastly I've actually gotten to see firsthand some of the more normal day to day maintenence and upkeep that goes into running a seismic array when I got to go out and help Chris Hayward(the person who actually runs the systems) perform a reinstallation and change out some equipment on some of the instruments. It's really interesting to see all the instruments in an urban environment where there placed into people's backyards, side rooms in police departments, backrooms of some business, etc. rahter than them just being buried out in some wide empty areas.

Now to talk about the same topic that everyone else has touched upon in the past couple of weeks: independence. My internship is a bit different than a lot fo the other interns because I'm not only working with my professor, but I'm also part of a small group who are in charge of monitoring the other 2 systems like I'm in charge of analyzing the Irving system. To compound this my advisor Heather is not the only proffesor working on the North Texas earthquakes so I'm also attending weekly meetings with a group of faculty at SMU where I present weekly data changes and analysis progress to them about the Irving sequence. Because of this when I think of what kind of independence that I'm exhibiting its more of the subtle ways that I've become more independent. Unlike at Texas A&M I can't simply walk to wherever I need to go so I've taken to planning out my daily commutes and trips very carefully, my eating habits are also a point which I now have pretty much full control over as well, but probably the its how I choose to go about my daily work that is the most challenging part of becoming more independent. Trying to decide whether I should be cleaning up some figures, getting more experience with the software, reading a new paper to get background information, writing a new script to make my workflow faster, etc. can be very difficult and I won't deny that there have been some points where I've simply sat twiddling my thumbs waiting for someone else to tell me what I should be doing. Overall though I think that I am learning how to be a bit more skillful in learning how to manage myself, but I believe that I'll always be more motivated and work more efficiently whenever I have a goal in mind, the only hurdle to overcome is learning how to create those goals myself whenever no one else is there to give me one. 

Edit: The map to the left is a map of the Irving sequence showing all the events that have occurred since January 1st, 2015 in the Irving-Dallas area. The triangles and diamonds show the locations of permanent and temporary stations that have been used to monitor the sequence. There are also two cross sectional views showing the events from an along-strike and cross-strike view in order to attempt to determine the locations of fault structures using our event locations.

June 13th, 2015

A second week has come and gone and I'm starting to get a better handle on each of the jobs I've been asked to do in the research group. I attended my first weekly research group meeting with the other departments and groups that are studying the North Texas seismicity at SMU and got to present some figures and data that I've assembled in the two weeks since I arrived. While I still haven't gotten used to the functions of all the programs just yet and have still only just begun to start to learn how to use the waveform cross correlation software, I feel like I'm making steady progress in being able to use all the programs properly. I've at least gotten to the point where I can come in and do my work without having to ask for help from the graduate students every 15 minutes, so I'm happy about that. 

The dataset I'll be working on is all the seismic data collected from the various seismic arrays that are currently being operated by SMU in North Texas. As such one of my jobs is coming in and using the Antelope program to examine if there were any events in the previous day(s) and do the picks myself. This data is being collected using a lot of different kinds of seismic instruments so the arrays themselves are a bit mixed due to having broadband, short period, netquake, etc. seismic instruments. Because were the ones collecting and processing the data were really the only university currently using it, the data will be used in publications later down the road once its been cleaned up and the researchers at SMU can properly analyze it.

As for programs we'll be using, I've already covered that I'm using Antelope to monitor the seismic arrays and do the event picking. I'm also using MATLAB in conjuction to Antelope in order to migrate, analyze, and present my data in figures using some scripts that I've written up with the help of the other grad students in the lab. Later on we'll start using GISMO to start cross correlating the data as well as some codes created by Mason Phillips, the previous IRIS intern who worked with SMU last summer, to help process the necessary data.

Finally, we've been looking into what areas in North Texas we might want to place some new instruments, so it looks like I may get to go out into the field soon as well which sounds fun. Although, it looks like a nice first 2 weeks without rain  is about to come to an end as the storm clouds are starting to return so we'll have to take that into account when we plan out where to put the new sensors.

June 5th, 2015

It's been an interesting 1st week of my internship placement, I've met a lot of new people and have learned a great deal about a slew of programs and software that I'd previously never heard of, but seem so useful that I'm surprised I never had before. The majority of my time during this week has been spent reading background papers and training in the software as I try to get up to speed with the rest of the research group. One particular thing that has been a great boon is that there is another member of the research group Monique who is a new graduate student and thus is also going through similar training as well. The other more experienced members of the group (Kevin, Remi, and Zack) have also been a great help answering any questions I've had and helping me work through issues that come up as I try to learn to use this new software. 

Overall my goals in this early part of my placement is to become proficient enough in the new software that I've been tasked with learning so that I am able to use and work in them without the need to constantly ask questions. The goal will be to have a deep understanding of each program to the point that I will be able to accomplish the tasks assigned to me quickly and efficiently and perhaps even gain such a mastery in each program that I am able to hasten some of the research project goals, although I am far from this point. Right now I'll settle for just being able to get through my daily tasks without constantly getting error messages. I also wish to gain a greater understanding of the progress that's already been made in the research project so that I can make better informed decisions as the project progresses in the future.

As time goes on and my skill with the software increases I will hope that I can not only fulfill my expected duties in the weekly project meetings, but also contribute to the discussions and provide helpful insight into the Irving earthquake system which I have been tasked with monitoring. Improving event locations and conducting waveform cross-correlations over large databases is also another goal of the project which I hope to achieve.

As the project closes I'll need to write an abstract for the AGU meeting in December and my hope is that I will have gained a deep understanding of the Irving earthquake system by this point and be able to correctly construct an abstract that shows the results of my internship in a clear, concise, and interesting manner.

May 28th, 2015

Threw a frisbee around for a while last night. I actually a caught the frisbee few times too, but I have stupid fingers that refused to work most of the time. It's been a pretty fun week overall and I'm just sad that I'll have to return to North Texas in a few days to get rained on all day for the next few months. I'll also miss all the free food that I'm getting here, I'm not used to eating so much and then going out and hiking and such. It's been a cool experience so far and I'm looking forward to starting my internship in a few days and getting to work on a project that is directly affecting me and my family. I've run out of things to say right now so I'll stop here.