Data Services Products: EARS EarthScope Automated Receiver Survey

The EarthScope Automated Receiver Survey (EARS. http://ears.iris.washington.edu) was a fully automated data product that queried the EarthScope Web Services in order to calculate bulk crustal properties of stations as new candidate data arrive (Note: prior to data day 2013-08-05, EARS was monitoring the USGS/NEIC weekly PDE (WHDF) catalog for new events). Through its processing sequence, EARS calculated the receiver functions and transformed them from the amplitude-time domain to amplitude as a function of crustal thickness, H, and the Vp/Vs ratio, K, using the predicted travel times of the Ps, PpPs and PsPs/PpPs phases over a suite of single-layer models. The calculated H and K values were then weighted based on the instantaneous phase of the receiver functions and an HK stack is formed for the station to allow estimation of its crustal thickness and Vp/Vs values (see figure).

Historical EARS data (1990 through June 2024) is available from the EARS Data Archive Repository.

Additional details of the processing model used within EARS can be found in chapter 4 of Philip Crotwell’s dissertation. The following maps show some of the latest results obtained by EARS for the Transportable Array (TA) component of the USArray.

To cite the IRIS DMC Data Products effort:

• Trabant, C., A. R. Hutko, M. Bahavar, R. Karstens, T. Ahern, and R. Aster (2012), Data Products at the IRIS DMC: Stepping Stones for Research and Other Applications, Seismological Research Letters, 83(5), 846–854, https://doi.org/10.1785/0220120032.

To cite the IRIS DMC EarthScope Automated Receiver Survey (EARS) or reference the use of its repository:

• IRIS DMC (2010), Data Services Products: EARS EarthScope Automated Receiver Survey, https://doi.org/10.17611/DP/EARS.1.

To cite the source of EARS:

• Crotwell, H. P., and T. J. Owens (2005), Automated receiver function processing, Seism. Res. Lett., 76, 702-708.

• EARS was developed as an EarthScope/USArray data product by H. Philip Crotwell and Thomas J. Owens of University of South Carolina with an initial goal of estimating the crustal thickness and Vp/Vs ratio across the continental United States, using the IRIS DMC waveform archive. After its initial successful implementation at the University of South Carolina and because of its high level of automation, its scope was expanded to cover all stations in the extensive waveform archive of the IRIS DMC. The EARS database now contains over 250,000 receiver functions and H-K values for over 2500 stations from 133 networks around the world.

• In response to the DMC Data Handling Interface (DHI) deprecation plan for 2013, on 2013-09-04 a new EARS, utilizing DMC web services, came online. The events processed by this system are now from the NEIC PDE/NEIC PDE-W catalogs and include HH & Z,1,2 channels in addition to the Z,N,E seismic channels.

• In April 2010, EARS was moved to IRIS DMC and became an IRIS DMC data product and continues to monitor the weekly PDE (WHDF) catalog and station database for candidate data that can contribute to calculation of the bulk crustal properties of stations.

• EARS development was supported by the EarthScope Program through NSF grants #EAR-0346113 and EAR-0642890 to the University of South Carolina. Continuing operation of EARS at the IRIS DMS is supported by the NSF grants #EAR-0552316 and EAR-0733069.

• Matthew J. Fouch for a shell script to convert EARS data to FuncLab format

• Manochehr Bahavar, IRIS DMC

2010-04-20

EARS moved to IRIS DMC and became an IRIS DMC data product

2013-09-04

EARS started utilizing DMC web services

2014-04-17

Removed dependency on the USGS/NEIC weekly PDE (WHDF) catalog

2015-01-20

Migrated from Oracle to PostgreSQL database

2024-06-30

EARS retired

2025-02-24

EARS Data Archive Repository online

Philip Crotwell
Lithospheric Seismology