GLISN presented at AGU, DEC 2009 .

TITLE: The GreenLand Ice Sheet monitoring Network (GLISN) PRESENTATION TYPE: Poster Requested SECTION/FOCUS GROUP: Union (U) SESSION: Scientific Progress in Geophysics from 25 Years of Sharing Data and Resources (U19) AUTHORS (FIRST NAME, LAST NAME): Kent R Anderson1, Bruce C Beaudoin2, Rhett Butler1, John F Clinton3, Trine Dahl-Jensen4, Goran Ekstrom5, Domenico Giardini3, Winfried Hanka6, Masaki Kanao7, Tine Larsen4, David McCormack9, Svein Mykkeltveit8, Meredith Nettles5, Nicola Piana Agostinetti10, Seiji Tsuboi11, Peter Voss4 INSTITUTIONS (ALL): 1. IRIS, Washington, DC, USA. 2. PASSCAL, IRIS, Socorro, NM, USA. 3. SED, ETHZ, Zurich, Switzerland. 4. GEUS, Copenhagen, Denmark. 5. LDEO, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, USA. 6. GEOFON, GFZ, Potsdam, Germany. 7. NIPR, Tokyo, Japan. 8. NORSAR, Kjeller, Norway. 9. NRC, Ottawa, ON, Canada. 10. INGV, Rome, Italy. 11. JAMSTEC, Yokohama, Japan.

ABSTRACT BODY:
The GreenLand Ice Sheet monitoring Network (GLISN) is a new, international, broadband seismic capability for Greenland, being installed and implemented through the joint collaboration of Denmark, Canada, Germany, Italy, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, and USA. GLISN is a real-time sensor array of 25 stations to enhance and upgrade the performance of the scarce existing Greenland seismic infrastructure for detecting, locating, and characterizing glacial earthquakes and other cryo-seismic phenomena, and contribute to our understanding of Ice Sheet dynamics. Complementing data from satellites, geodesy, and other sources, and in concert with these technologies, GLISN will provide a powerful tool for detecting change, and will advance new frontiers of research in the glacial systems; the underlying geological and geophysical processes affecting the Greenland Ice Sheet; interactions between oceans, climate, and the cryosphere; and other multidisciplinary areas of interest to geoscience and climate dynamics.

The glacial processes that induce seismic events (internal deformation, sliding at the base, disintegration at the calving front, drainage of supra-glacial lakes) are all integral to the overall dynamics of glaciers, and seismic observations of glaciers therefore provide a quantitative means for monitoring changes in their behavior over time. Long-term seismic monitoring of the Greenland Ice Sheet will contribute to identifying possible unsuspected mechanisms and metrics relevant to ice sheet collapse, and will provide new constraints on Ice Sheet dynamic processes and their potential roles in sea-level rise during the coming decades. GLISN will provide a new, fiducial reference network in and around Greenland for monitoring these phenomena in real-time, and for the broad seismological study of Earth and earthquakes.

The GLISN development is focused on 1) upgrading equipment and adding real-time telemetry to existing seismic infrastructure in Greenland, 2) installing new, telemetered, broadband seismic stations on Greenland�s perimeter and ice sheet, 3) coalescing telemetry from existing real-time, high-quality, broadband stations in and around Greenland into the GLISN network, and 4) distributing the real-time data to users and international data centers. In collaboration with GLISN, the Global Centroid Moment Tensor Project will provide a near-real-time catalog of glacial earthquakes. The development incorporates state-of-the-art broadband seismometers and data acquisition, Iridium and local Internet, power systems capable of autonomous operation throughout the polar year, and stable, well-coupled installations on bedrock and the Ice Sheet. GPS will also be installed at sites on the Ice Sheet. All data from GLISN will be freely and openly available to anyone in real-time, without restriction.

INDEX TERMS: [0774] CRYOSPHERE / Dynamics, [0794] CRYOSPHERE / Instruments and techniques, [7294] SEISMOLOGY / Seismic instruments and networks, [7299] SEISMOLOGY / General or miscellaneous.