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<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=958050804-01032011><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial>Stu Rojstaczer later used Onset StowAway loggers in plastic
containers (managed in the field by Ann Deutch) to collect data on a number of
geysers including Old Faithful and Daisy. I am pretty sure the data was
used to calibrate and validate the math model they reported in a paper
coauthored by S. E. Ingebritsen and S. A. Rojstaczer "Controls on Geyser
Periodicity" published in Science Vol 262 5 November 1993.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=958050804-01032011><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr align=left><SPAN class=958050804-01032011><FONT color=#0000ff
size=2 face=Arial>Ralph Taylor</FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR>
<DIV dir=ltr lang=en-us class=OutlookMessageHeader align=left>
<HR tabIndex=-1>
<FONT size=2 face=Tahoma><B>From:</B> geysers-bounces@lists.wallawalla.edu
[mailto:geysers-bounces@lists.wallawalla.edu] <B>On Behalf Of </B>David
Schwarz<BR><B>Sent:</B> Sunday, February 27, 2011 10:50 PM<BR><B>To:</B> Geyser
Observation Reports<BR><B>Subject:</B> Re: [Geysers] Grotto shenanigans, and a
researcher question<BR></FONT><BR></DIV>
<DIV></DIV><BR> Sorry, disregard. Paul Silver of Carnegie was
the lead for the birdhouse project. I think the moon lander _was_ Stu
Rojstaczer's, though. I can't remember what the connection was between the
studies, if any, but I'm pretty sure they both started around 1996.<BR><BR>David
Schwarz<BR><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 8:21 PM, David Schwarz <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A
href="mailto:david.schwarz@alumni.duke.edu">david.schwarz@alumni.duke.edu</A>></SPAN>
wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex"
class=gmail_quote><BR> Minor quibble: Duke University, not
the Carnegie Institute. Those boxes were part of Stuart Rojstaczer's
project. As I understood it, one goal, at least for funding purposes,
was to determine whether variation in the behavior of relatively regular
geysers could be used to predict earthquakes. He later presented the
study as "the first comprehensive effort to monitor geyser activity in the Old
Faithful region of Yellowstone National Park over a lengthy (one year) time
period."<BR><BR> I think the secondary sensors were themocouples
connected to radio transmitters. If you knew where to look near Bonita
Pool, you could pick out a suspicious line of small rocks leading up to a
object that could have passed for a hamster-sized moon lander.<BR><FONT
color=#888888><BR>David</FONT>
<DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV class=h5><BR><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Mary Beth Schwarz
<SPAN dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:schwarzmb@gmail.com"
target=_blank>schwarzmb@gmail.com</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex"
class=gmail_quote><BR> The Carnegie Institute study
used motion detectors set into little boxes that resembled bird houses high
in trees but visible to visitors. The signals were sent to the OFVC
with with sensors powered with solar batteries except for the Castle monitor
which had a large orange ice chest that was difficult to camouflage at the
base of the tree.<BR><BR> The summer volunteers
turned in lots of eruption data as requested to check the accuracy of the
monitors. The "bird house" for the Grand sensor was easily seen
from the boardwalk and generated questions constantly. Especially at
night there was so much steam movement at Grand that the actual eruption
time was not discernible. It was even worse for Castle since there are
so many splashes in the interval not to mention lots of steam
movement. They tried to block out times when Castle could not be ready
to erupt, but with minors and then the next major the intervals could be
short and it never worked well.<BR><BR> Indeed the
monitors at Daisy and Riverside were the ones that worked fairly
well.<BR><FONT color=#888888><BR> Mary Beth
Schwarz</FONT>
<DIV>
<DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Ralph Taylor <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:ralph.c.taylor@gmail.com"
target=_blank>ralph.c.taylor@gmail.com</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; MARGIN: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex"
class=gmail_quote><BR><BR>
<DIV class=gmail_quote>
<DIV>>>On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 10:12 AM, Davis, Brian L. <SPAN
dir=ltr><<A href="mailto:brdavis@iusb.edu"
target=_blank>brdavis@iusb.edu</A>></SPAN> wrote:<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex"
class=gmail_quote>David Schwarz wrote:<BR><BR>>The main problem with
the tree-mounted sensors (can't remember<BR>> if they were detecting
motion or heat) was that they couldn't distinguish<BR>> between steam
clouds and a water column.<BR><BR>>>Is there any more description
of these or the "camera boxes"? I'm not familiar with either (how they
worked, when/where they were deployed, >>etc).<BR></BLOCKQUOTE>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV>I remember seeing them. They were about 12 inches tall by maybe
8 inches square, if I recall correctly after all these years. They
used a radio link to computers in the old OFVC, and integrated at least
two sensors, infrared and another that I don't recall. They were
located 10-12 feet above ground level in trees, one across the bike path
from Castle, one across the river from Riverside, one in the trees south
of Daisy, and one near Old Faithful (I don't recall just where).</DIV>
<DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex"
class=gmail_quote><BR>> The idea of using a non-contact IR
thermometer pointed at the runoff<BR>> instead of a thermister seems
like it would work, but then it's one more<BR>> piece of hardware to
fail in extreme Yellowstone conditions...<BR><BR>>>That's true -
but a system that might work, some of the time, still seems preferable
to a system that doesn't exist and isn't recording anything >>(the
current state of affairs at Lone Star and... well, most of the rest of
the known geysers). It might just be a "summer system". It might not
>>even work then. but I think it's an interesting alternative, and
I wasn't sure if anyone had tried it, or even used one of these remote
IR >>thermometers on a geyser. It would seem ideal, as it does
*not* require a permit - it's exactly as invasive to the environment as
a camera.<BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV>Plenty of loggers exist now -- last summer we had about 40 deployed
in the Upper, Midway, Lower, and West Thumb Geyser basins. Over the
winter of 2010-2011 there are 39 loggers deployed. True, Lone Star
is not covered, but one reason for that is that nobody has expressed
interest in doing an analysis of Lone Star, and it is inconvenient to
deploy and monitor that one geyser. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I do not know of any infrared monitoring attempts since the Carnegie
Institute "boxes" we have been discussing. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Any instruments left in the field *do* require a permit, and the
permit conditions generally require that the equipment be "out of the view
of the public". This can be difficult if the equipment requires a
clear view of the geyser. While an infrared sensor is only "as
invasive to the environment as a camera", that is only true if it is
hand-held and removed when the observer leaves. If the infrared
sensor is left in the field, it is no less invasive than our thermistor
probes and loggers.</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: rgb(204,204,204) 1px solid; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; PADDING-LEFT: 1ex"
class=gmail_quote>> it sounds unduly complex and probably expensive
compared to using<BR>> a ready-made physical probe/logger
system.<BR><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
<DIV>Yes</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>>>Again, a good point at least on cost - it would seem this
would be a custom job, not something that can be grabbed off the shelf.
And while PIR >>and IR sensors are cheap, they certainly aren't as
cheap as a thermocouple. But I'm not at all sure it would be more
complicated - it's a sensor >>with an analog or digital output. You
wire that into a datalogger. The only additional mechanical problem is
pointing it (but, you no longer need >>a sensor that is waterproof
and surviving multiple freeze-thaw cycles in water, which isn't a simple
problem to solve either). But there are some >>possible compensatory
advantages...<BR></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>A logger using a thermistor (better suited to the conditions than
thermocouples) costs less than $200 and we have had pretty good success
with reliability and robustness. Freeze-thaw cycles don't seem to
hurt the instruments but ice dams can form and divert runoff away from the
sensors. The sensors we use are stainless steel encased, so
watertightness is not a problem. The loggers are no more or no less
difficult to make waterproof than an infrared sensor with an attached data
logger, and do not have problems with fog, animals blocking the view, or
snow accumulating in front of the lens. </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><BR>>>1) It's perhaps more likely to get permission to
"install" something small and "off the sinter" than permission to put
something in a runoff >>channel (making sure it's hidden from
everyone).<BR><BR>>>2) It also potentially makes it easier to access
to maintain (the number of placement options go way up)<BR></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>I can't comment on #1, but I disagree with #2. In either case,
placement options are limited, but generally doable. There are a few
geysers that we have not monitored because of placement difficulty, but
very few. Finding a way to do an infrared logger for a geyser like
Beehive with little cover around would be quite challenging in my
opinion.</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><BR>>>3) One "installation" can potentially monitor many
geysers (all within unobstructed line-of-sight). If you're in a runoff
channel that's not much. If >>you could get away with this from a
hill (or the top of a building) overlooking, say, geyser hill, it might be
a very economical way of "monitoring" >>a lot of things
simultaneously (with a multi-channel recorder even).<BR></DIV></DIV>
<DIV>I suspect that separating out the different geysers in a multi-geyser
setup would be an interesting challenge. Picking out eruptions from
other variations in signal is the hardest thing about the logging that I
do.</DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV><BR>>>Is it immediate and off-the-shelf, perfect for what we'd
like? Nope... if there was something like that, we'd be using it. But it
is an interesting >>ideal I think. Next time I get in the
neighborhood, maybe I'll try to find an IR thermometer to test.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV></DIV>
<DIV>Ralph Taylor<BR><FONT color=#888888><BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#888888>--
<DIV><BR>Brian
Davis<BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Geysers
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href="https://lists.wallawalla.edu/mailman/listinfo/geysers"
target=_blank>https://lists.wallawalla.edu/mailman/listinfo/geysers</A><BR></DIV></FONT></DIV></DIV><BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Geysers
mailing list<BR><A href="mailto:Geysers@lists.wallawalla.edu"
target=_blank>Geysers@lists.wallawalla.edu</A><BR><A
href="https://lists.wallawalla.edu/mailman/listinfo/geysers"
target=_blank>https://lists.wallawalla.edu/mailman/listinfo/geysers</A><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR>
<DIV
style="DISPLAY: inline"></DIV></DIV></DIV><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>Geysers
mailing list<BR><A href="mailto:Geysers@lists.wallawalla.edu"
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target=_blank>https://lists.wallawalla.edu/mailman/listinfo/geysers</A><BR></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR>
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