Andrew M. Miner1
The Nisqually earthquake and its aftermath (and now the earthquake sequence on the Denali fault) again demonstrate that a quick response by geodesists to large earthquakes is likely to have serendipitous results. In the former case, time-series from sites installed near the earthquake (e.g., CPXF) quickly suggested that some sort of afterslip might have occurred. The relatively large magnitude of this putative effect, however, seemed to cast doubt on its reality: I for one didn't loose much sleep over it. Meanwhile, the somewhat arbitrary decision to install sites further afield proved to be a lucky one. SC02 (Friday Harbor), whose location was driven largely by convenience, has quickly become a poster child of the slow earthquake set. In turn, deep creep, which was not widely contemplated when SC02 went in (at least south of the border) may explain the geodetic peculiarities surrounding the Nisqually event (Sumner and Miller, this conference).
Despite the funding limbo pending a yea or nay on the Plate Boundary Observatory, we are trying to take advantage of opportunities to be similarly fortunate. SC03 (Snow Dome) takes advantage of a unique location and a window of opportunity that may close in the next few years. The Puget Reference Station Utility (PRSU) is a mainly county and municipal GPS network for which we are funded (NSF) to provide geodetic-quality monuments over the next three years. Other projects in early planning stages at CWU are intended to densify existing transects that are already of considerable interest (proposed sites BPET, HUDU, OCTO, STPK, EOU). At these sites good bedrock is exposed, so inexpensive monuments can be constructed and occupied in campaign-fashion if funding for full instrumentation is not available. Oregon State University and the University of Idaho are also installing new continuous sites as time and funding permit. More continuous sites and longer campaign time-series in the swath between these two institutions will, I believe, paint a much more interesting picture than present block models would suggest.
1 Central Washington University, Ellensburg, Washington