1. Station Metadata: What do I Need?
Dr. Mary Templeton
IRIS Data Management Center
Data Management Workshop
Bogotá, Colombia July 2014

2. Why is Metadata Important?
To use data, you need to know where and how it was recorded:
x,y,z,t
How do you translate the time series to ground motion?
Direction
Amplitude scaling
Phase shifting
The data format must be understood
Metadata is easiest to record before it’s forgotten
Network datalesses no longer required.

3. Steps for Building Metadata
Register your network and station names
Create a dataless SEED volume
Enter network information
Enter information for a single station
Add additional stations using the first as a “clone”
Details of these steps will be covered by Tim & Rick

4. What do I Need? Network information FDSN network code Network name
Operating institution

5. What do I Need? Station information Registered station code
Station long name
Location of the station and it’s sensors
Latitude (degrees from -90 to +90)
Longitude (degrees from -180 to +180)
Elevation (ground surface and sensor in m)
Depth (surface elevation – sensor elevation in m)
No corner period needed for accelerometers

6. What do I Need? Station information Sensor channel orientations
Angle from magnetic north to each horizontal channel (degrees from 0 to 360)
Sensor wiring convention
Normal: upward ground motion produces a positive Z amplitude (similar for N and E)
Reverse: upward ground motion produces a negative Z amplitude (industry geophones)
No corner period needed for accelerometers

7. What do I Need? Station information Sample rates
Sensor long-period corner
Sensor gain
No corner period needed for accelerometers

8. What do I Need? No corner period needed for accelerometers
Tim will touch on the SEED manual – it contains details of channel naming based on this information

9. What do I Need? Station information Instrument response Sensor
Sensitivity
Poles and zeros
A0 normalization factor
Datalogger
Preamplifier gain
Bit weight (A/D scale factor)
FIR coefficients for your field acquisition settings
other
No corner period needed for accelerometers

10. What do I Need? Station information Optional
Text description of instrumentation
Instrument serial numbers
Comments documenting timing and other data problems
No corner period needed for accelerometers

11. What do I Need? And Finally….
Time span (epoch) for which this information is valid
If any of this metadata changes, a new epoch need to be created with updated metadata
Epochs must not overlap in time
No corner period needed for accelerometers

12. About Instrument Responses
The bad news
This is can be the most difficult part of gathering station metadata
The good news
We’ve created a response library to make this easier
More about this after the break!