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Polar Services - 1995-96 Season Report

UNAVCO GPS Support to the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs

SUMMARY

The 1995/96 season was the first season that the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs directly funded UNAVCO (T-545) to provide full scale high precision differential GPS support to the United States Antarctic Program. A total of 15 Polar Program Science and Technical Events, encompassing a range of applications, were supported throughout the field season. Post season support (primarily data reduction) was also provided to several projects. Although pre-season planning was somewhat limited due to the late agreement on funding, project planning, equipment preparation, and grantee training were conducted before deployment.

UNAVCO provides geodetic quality GPS receivers for high precision surveying to scientific investigators. Thirteen GPS receivers from the UNAVCO pool (six owned by the Polar Program) were provided for support throughout the field season - nine Trimble SSE/SSi and four TurboRogue SNR8000 receivers. The TurboRogue receivers were dedicated to S-098 for the entire season and were not available to other investigators. The Trimble receivers were used on the remaining projects, typically with three receivers per project. ASA Engineering also provided two Trimble SE receivers, managed by UNAVCO as necessary, which were used by S-078 and T-531.

A UNAVCO field engineer was based at McMurdo Station, the logistics hub for all GPS-supported projects, during the entire season. Two field engineers were present during the busiest time from mid-December through January. The field engineers provided direct field assistance to projects, repaired and tested equipment between field campaigns, provided miscellaneous technical support throughout the season, processed the data from most field projects, and provided data archiving support. They also provided new operator training and refresher training sessions for those who had been trained at the UNAVCO Boulder Facility or had previous GPS experience. The level of data processing support was substantially increased this season, and significantly reduced the data processing burden for scientists not experienced with GPS data processing.

UNAVCO support began with an initial assessment of SIP requests to determine the resources required to adequately support the field season. Due to funding uncertainties, UNAVCO did not begin to address these requests until August 1995. Although this resulted in some uncertainty with investigators regarding the level of available GPS resources, full support was provided to all projects that submitted GPS support request SIPs and still requested GPS support when contacted in August. At McMurdo Station, additional project support requests were met on a resource available basis. Table 1 summarizes the support provided. See APPENDIX A - Detailed Summary of Support Provided for a more detailed listing of individual project support.

With funding in place, the UNAVCO Facility is responding to 1996/97 GPS support requests immediately upon receipt of the SIPs. With this advanced discussion, investigators will benefit from timely planning and early assurance of support. This will also allow the Facility to better plan for resource usage. Several Polar investigators have already contacted UNAVCO directly expressing interest in support for the upcoming season. For the 1996/97 and future seasons, UNAVCO support is identified as S-295.

1995/96 Projects Using UNAVCO Support
Event	Principal Investigator	Receiver Days Used	Support Level(a)	SIP Request	Priority Level(b)
S-098	Bell/Blankenship	468	Low	Yes	1
S-180	Sridhar Anandakrishnan	147	High	Yes	2
S-042W	Bob Wharton	81	Medium	Yes	2
S-042F	Andrew Fountain	76	High	Yes	2
S-320	Rikk Kvitek	60	Low	Yes	2
T-390	Colin Harris	44	Medium	Yes	3
S-171	Ed Waddington	42	Low	Yes	1
S-181	Mark Kurtz	30	High	Yes	2
S-185	Ellen Mosley-Thompson	28	High	Yes	1
ASA	Jim Mastro (Science Diver)	20	Low	No	3
S-005	Art DeVries	8	Low	No	3
S-081	Philip Kyle	4	Low	Yes	2
S-042M	Diane McKnight	4	Low	No	3
S-322	Doug Lowenthal	2	Low	No	3
T-531(c)	John Evans	180	High	Yes	3

: a. Low - one to five days of technical support provided.
Medium - six to ten days of technical support provided.
High - more than ten days of technical support provided
: b. See next section for project prioritizing guidelines.
: c. T-531 used ASA Engineering receivers and UNAVCO technical support.

UNAVCO GPS Support to the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs - 17 MAY 1996

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Last modified Monday, 26-Nov-2007 22:31:07 UTC