Geophone network – Iceland geology

May 26, 2015

Böðvarshólar geophone station goes off-line on 28-May-2015

I am going to turn off the geophone station in Böðvarshólar on 28-May-2015. The only renaming geophone stations after this is going to be in Heklubyggð. I don’t know for how long I am going to keep it running. The Böðvarshólar geophone station has been recording earthquakes since 2012. It has however proved to be difficult to keep running remote geophone stations due to connection issues, hardware issues and so on. I have also been having a major problem with the 3G signal leaking into the recording and creating a problem (this was a huge problem this winter with all the snow). It was clear from the start that I would not be able to maintain a remote network forever. This was and always has been a temporary network. In the time I have been running this network. I have collected so much data that I am yet to properly work with it, install magnitudes, depths and locations in the data files. At the moment I got around of five years worth of unprocessed data. There is also a change taking place where this geophone is hosted. Changes that are outside of my control and I have nothing to do with them.

I won’t stop recording earthquakes, but since I won’t be living in Iceland I am only going to record earthquakes in Denmark and mostly long distant one [magnitude 6,0 and larger]. That is going to mean fewer earthquakes that I record each week and over the year (Denmark has few local earthquakes). The data is going to be easier to process at the same time due fewer recorded earthquakes that I have to handle. The only geophone station that I am going to continue to run for now is the one in Heklubyggð, how long it is going to remain on-line I do not know. That depends a lot on the person that owns the summerhouse where it is hosted. I hope everything understand why I have to turn my geophone network down in Iceland. Things are also changing for me personally and that change might not allow me to run this geophone network in the future. As I say above, I won’t stop recording earthquakes, I am just going to do with in a different way.

My geophones can be viewed here. Heklubyggð geophone doesn’t update at the moment due to failed WLAN transmitter (it is frozen). I am going to replace it soon with a new WLAN transmitter. The current WLAN transmitter is close to 10 years old (2007 or 2008) so it has started to fail due to old age and usage.

April 26, 2015April 26, 2015

Changes to my geophone network next year

I have made the following decision on the future of my geophone network that I am currently running in Iceland. Next year (2016) I am going to do the following changes to it.

Böðvarshólar geophone station is going to be closed down in 2016 (late that year). It has been on-line since 2012 (3 years). There are also changes coming to the place where the geophone is hosted, so I don’t think that I can have it anyway longer then until 2017 or 2018 because of that. There already have changes happened creating problems for me, but since I am at the location I have managed to fix it temporary.
Heklubyggð geophone station is going to remain on-line for the time being. How long that is going to last I do not know. Since it depends on the owner where the geophone is hosted. I hope it is going to be on-line for few more years. It has been on-line since 2008 (7 years).
I have cancelled the setting up of new geophone station in Hvammstangi. I was unable to find good location and the cost of starting it would be high and it would only be on-line for a short period of time.
There is going to be a geophone in Hvammstangi for the time I am going to be living there (until 2017 or 2018, maybe shorter time period if I am lucky). That geophone is the one I have at home.

Cost of running a 3G internet connection has also been going up in the past few years in Iceland and I am expecting that to continue. Along with the difficulty that I have to deal with problems if a geophone station fails for any reasons, that being a software or hardware. It was also clear from the start when I started this project that I would not be able to continue it forever. I simply do not have the resources to do so or the time. The direction of my live has also been changing in past few years and I found my place in Denmark (this is Padborg) and I plan on living there for good once I move to Denmark in the year 2017 or 2018 (hopefully sooner). I made the decision on moving to Denmark in the year 2007. I was not sure in the beginning where to stay for good, that issue has now been resolved.

I won’t stop recording earthquakes even if I move to Denmark. It is just going to be different since Denmark doesn’t have a lot of earthquakes (1 – 3 earthquakes a year during a busy year). I plan on focusing on detecting distant earthquakes around the world in Denmark. I plan on buying Volksmeter one day (two channel costs $2000 / 1.841,83€) to record distant earthquakes in Denmark.

Permanently closed down websites

Please note that I have closed down the following websites permanently.

Europe geology

Canary Island geology

Falkland Island geology

The websites are going to stay up for some time until I delete them. I don’t plan on bringing them back since there was never high traffic on this websites even if something was going on in the areas they covered (Europe, Canary Islands and Falkland Islands).

Possibility of a new website

I am currently considering opening up a new website covering large earthquakes around world. I haven’t made up my mind yet. If I open up that website it is going to be on its own domain and not a sub-website of jonfr.com as this website currently is. I don’t know what the interest level is for a such website is yet. There are many websites that cover large earthquakes already on the internet. This website would be English only if I start it.

September 18, 2014September 18, 2014

Daily Bárðarbunga volcano update on 18-September-2014

This information is going to get outdated quickly.

Current status on Bárðarbunga volcano at 20:36 UTC

Largest earthquakes in Bárðarbunga yesterday (17-September-2014) was a magnitude 5,2. Largest earthquake today (18-September-2014) was a magnitude 5,3. Other earthquakes have been smaller.
Bárðarbunga volcano caldera continues to drop. When the magnitude 5,3 earthquake happened today at 14:21 UTC the caldera dropped 20 – 30 cm.
GPS data (more GPS data can be found here) suggest to me that the dyke at Vonarskarð might be getting ready to erupt or getting re-activated. It formed in the first two weeks when current activity started in Bárðarbunga volcano on 16-August-2014. It is already there, it however failed to start an eruption, but as I say, it might be getting ready to get active again. This has been followed by some minor earthquake activity. There is however a more complicated picture into this. The details can be found later in this article. [Please note that due to licensing issues I only link to the GPS data. This means that data on the link is going to get updated in next few hours and are going to look different from what I have written about them now.]
The eruption in Holuhraun continues as before. There has not been any view of the eruption for the past two days due to fog. So I don’t know for sure what is happening there.

Harmonic tremor data

I can see two things in the harmonic tremor data. The pressure is increasing in Bárðarbunga volcano system. I am also seeing pulses of harmonic tremor and that is not good. It means that magma has somewhere found a path to the surface, it just isn’t there yet, but it is working way up. It is impossible to know if this magma gets all the way up or not. Small eruptions are also not impossible, since there signature might simply be lost in the noise on the tremor plots that I am using from Icelandic Met Office.

Tremor in Dyngjuháls SIL station. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Tremor on Vonaskarð SIL station. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Harmonic tremor as it appears on Skrokkalda SIL station. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Harmonic tremor on Grímsfjall SIL station. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Met Office.

Current status on the cauldrons

According to the news that I have heard some of the cauldrons that are in Dyngjujökull (south of Holuhraun) are still getting deeper. This suggest that there is still a lot of warm under the glacier that is melting the glacier. No glacier flood has happened due this. I don’t know if any new cauldrons have formed in recent days. Most of the cauldrons are located above the dyke, few are located above Bárðarbunga volcan in its slopes.

Tungafellsjökull volcano

I am seeing in the GPS data that Tungafellsjökull volcano might be getting more magma inflow. Since it appears to be inflating. This has not been confirmed so far. Currently there is nothing to suggest that Tungafellsjökull volcano is going to erupt at this point in time. It might simply be responding to the all the noise that Bárðarbunga is making at the moment, along with stress changes in the crust. If it erupts, it would be first documented eruption in the past 8000 years at least (maybe longer).

Next update is going to be tomorrow or sooner if anything major happens. It is possible to watch my webicorders here. They are updated every 5 min.

Article updated at 21:05 UTC.
Article updated at 21:14 UTC.

April 13, 2014April 13, 2014

Earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes ridge

Today (13-April-2014) an earthquake swarm started on the Reykjanes Ridge. The earthquake swarm is taking place not far from Geirfuladrangi that is an ocean rock in this area. It is only occupied by birds during the summer. This rock was formed in an eruption at this location some 300 to 700 years ago. I am not sure exactly what year that did happen. This is the second earthquakes swarm taking place at this location this month with last earthquake swarm taking place in this location on 4-April-2014 as can be seen here.

The earthquake swarm on the Reykjanes ridge. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

Largest earthquakes have had the magnitude around 3,0 and above. Due to distance from the SIL network there magnitude is being underestimated by the automatic calculations in the SIL network. It is possible to see the earthquake appear on my geophone network here (the two stations I still have up and running in Iceland). The earthquake swarm is currently ongoing, it however drops in activity for shorter and longer period of time. I don’t know if this is due to tectonic movements or magma movement in the volcano that is at this location. So far I have not seen any signs of eruption on nearby SIL stations.

Hard drive update: I am now up and running (mostly) since I got new hard drive earlier this week. It appears that I might have lost some data. I am not sure how much data was lost. But it might have just been an minor data loss from the looks of it. Few earthquakes pictures of activity in early April-2014. This data loss was due to bad sectors on my old hard drive and the lost data cannot be recovered.

Google Adsense: As all “good” monopoly Google Adsense has close to zero help service when it comes solving issues with Google Adsense accounts. Currently my Google Adsense account is in some type of enabled or disabled state (I don’t know and information about the problem is limited to none, even if I have asked for help on this issue). I am not sure what is going to happen with my Google Adsense account. I am not sure if I am going to try and enable it soon, since that might not work at all. I am not just sure what happens if I try again since this process at Google Adsense is about 90% automatic and done with robots rather than humans.

Amazon Advertisements: Since I don’t have Google Adsense advertisements (at the moment anyway). I am going to use Amazon Advertisements and try to earn some income from them. However there is an difference between Google and Amazon. The difference is that Amazon advertisements are not CPI advertisements or CPC/PPC advertisements.

With Amazon Advertisement I get 5 to 15% of the price of each item sold on Amazon via my banners that I have up here. Each click is valid for 90 days (it used to be like that) according to Amazon FAQ (UK. US FAQ can be found here) on the income aspect of Amazon Advertisements.

March 27, 2014

Earthquake activity in Hekla volcano continues

Today (27-March-2014) during the night three earthquakes took place in Hekla volcano. This were typical earthquakes and like those that have been taking place earlier in March. What this earthquake activity means I do not yet know. The magnitude of this earthquakes was in the range of 0,7 to 0,8 with the depth of 9,7 to 8,3 km.

The earthquakes in Hekla volcano system. Copyright of this image belongs to Icelandic Meteorological Office.

So far there are no signs of an imminent eruption in Hekla volcano. It remains unclear what this earthquake activity means. Since Hekla volcano normally does not have this type of activity before an eruption. But everything is a first sometimes.

Geophone network

Due to some type of internet failure my geophone at Hekla volcano is not updating. It is working but only in local capability. I am not receiving the data from it over the internet as I should do normally. I do not know when this is going to be fixed. This also means that the web camera (I don’t own them or run them) are also not updating for the same reason. Míla web camera for Hekla volcano is working, but it is at greater distance.

The geophone at Bjarghús is offline due to connection issue with 3G. I am currently working on solving this issue. I hope that it is resolved tomorrow (before the weekend). That geophone is also working but I am not receiving its data over the internet.

Eyrarbakki geophone station is no longer in operation. The person who was hosting it for me was unable to host it any more. The hardware is going to be re-located in Húnaþing Vestra in December. I don’t have an location yet for it. But I am working on finding an new location for it.

February 22, 2014February 22, 2014

Two minor earthquakes detected with my geophone network

It does not happen often. But I do detect earthquakes sometimes that Icelandic Meteorological Office does not detect on it’s network. The reason for that is simple. This earthquakes are too small to be detected by the SIL stations far away. My geophone network is able to detect earthquakes down to ML-2,0 when weather is good and if they are close enough. It doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. The earthquakes that I recorded on 20-February-2014 had the magnitude above ML0,0. What the magnitude is exactly I do not know. Since the software that I use does not allow for exact magnitude calculations (far as I know). The first earthquake took place at 12:36 UTC.

The earlier earthquake that I detected at Bjarghús geophone station. This earthquake had the magnitude of 0,1 to 0,5. This image is released under Creative Commons Licence. See CC Licence page for more details.

The earlier earthquakes at Böðvarshólar geophone station. This earthquake had the magnitude of 0,1 to 0,5. This image is released under Creative Commons Licence. See CC Licence page for more details.

A second earthquake took place at 18:41 UTC. It was slightly larger than the first earthquake.

The second earthquake at Bjarghús geophone station. This earthquake had the magnitude of 0,8 to 1,2 and distance of around 14 km. This image is released under Creative Commons Licence. See CC Licence page for more details.

The earthquake at Böðvarshólar geophone station. This earthquake had the magnitude of 0,8 to 1,2 and an distance around 17 km.This image is released under Creative Commons Licence. See CC Licence page for more details.

All three channels of the second earthquake. This is Bjarghús geophone station. This image is released under Creative Commons Licence. See CC Licence page for more details.

All three channels of the second earthquake. This is Böðvarshólar geophone station. This image is released under Creative Commons Licence. See CC Licence page for more details.

I have not recorded any more earthquakes since this activity. Last earthquake before that took place in the year 2006 best to my knowledge. That was just one earthquake and Icelandic Meteorological Office was unable to locate that earthquake too due to lack of SIL stations in the area of my geophone. Back in 2006 I had one geophone and it was located in the village of Hvammstangi where I used to live. I don’t know if any more earthquakes are going to take place. It is difficult to know if any more earthquakes are going to take place. If they do they are going to appear on my geophones (Böðvarshólar and Bjarghús) in Húnaþing Vestra.

January 15, 2014

Main geophone network computer is down due to a hardware failure

As many have noticed, my webicorder website is no longer updating and has not done so since 9-December-2013. The reason why it is not updating is simple. The computer that handles the updates is now totally ruined. It was the victim of the capacitor plague that took place few years ago, the main-board that failed is from the year 2007 (7 years old) and it clear that this issue with capacitor was not over when this motherboard was made.

The blown capacitors on the motherboard. As can be seen, it is totally ruined. Image is under Creative Commons Licence, please see CC Licence page for more details.

Second picture of the damage to the capacitors on the motherboard. Image is under Creative Commons Licence, please see CC Licence page for more details.

This failure was so bad it crashed my router and internet connection until I was able to reboot it when I got back home. Cost of a new computer (motherboard+cpu+graphic card+memory) is 268,16€ (350€ if I want to have some space to adjust if something isn’t available) according to my best estimate. I just want to buy and install it my self. I guess the hard drive is fine, but I have not yet tested it and I guess that I won’t test it until I get new computer. As my finances currently stand there is no hope that I am going to be able to afford this any time soon. So any donations in order to help me fix this problem are welcomed.

Without the webicorder website and this computer I am not going to be able to post high resolutions of earthquakes and it is not going to be possible to monitor earthquake swarms in Iceland in close to real time. Since this computer did handle all geophones in one place. It also uploaded the images for the geophones and I had on it the software to locate and analyse earthquakes that took place in Iceland and worldwide. This computer also allowed me to monitor for earthquakes in Denmark and other nearby countries if anything major did happen (earthquakes over magnitude 5,0). I hope that I can replace this hardware soon. Just how soon that is going to be I do not know at the moment.

December 3, 2013December 3, 2013

Donations and changes to the geophone network

I need donations in December as any other month. I am not going into details since I have explained them before and they can all be found here already. I do know one thing, mentally it is really wearing me out to always have money problems over the past few months and this problem is going to continue for the next year as thing currently stand. I hope that this problem is going to be resolved one way or an other, but that is not looking good as is. In December I am having the continued money issue as before and it does not look good currently money wise. As things stand now I won’t be able to afford anything in December and that is a lot worse status now then I was having last year. Since I need to cover many types of cost as anyone else. I also want to point out that geology is a field of patience, since often nothing can happen for a long time (as we see it). If you are bored waiting for something to happen you can pass the time by reading my short stories that I put on-line here. It is at least an way to pass the time when nothing is happening in Iceland. I update my short story website regularly when I finish new stories.

I have found a new website that allows me to add an donation button to this website. I am currently in verification process with that website and I hope to finish it in next few days. Once that progress is finished the new donation button is going to be added to this blog. If you want to donate to me regularly then it can be done by using the subscription button. I have not found this service in the same manner anywhere else then on Paypal. I am going to use Payza for one time donations. If you want to send one time donations to my Paypal account then you have to use my email address as explained here.

I also need donations to buy new hardware. This is just for repairs and to strengthen my geophone network in readability.

1: I need a new hard drive for Skeiðflöt geophone station (more details on this station below). A new hard drive costs 11700 ISK or 70,29€ (521,39 DKK).
2: I need to buy a backup power for Böðvarshólar geophone station. It costs 8950 ISK or 53,77€ (398,84 DKK). I did delay buying this due to lack of money at present time. I hope to buy the backup power in January-2014 at the latest if I can afford it. I am going to buy this backup power in December if I get donations for it.

The hard drive in Skeiðflöt geophone station is failing and has been doing so since earlier this year. I need to replace it before the hard drive fails completely. I have ordered a new one already and that is one of the reason why I don’t have any money at the moment. I need to add backup power for Böðvarshólar geophone station to deal with power fluctuation in the area, mostly during bad weather and general power issues.

Changes to geophone network

In December the geophone station at Skeiðflöt is stopping operation for good. The reason being is that the person how is hosting it for me is having personal changes and cannot host it for me any-more. This is the downside of having geophone station located in someone house. The hardware is going to be relocated to north Iceland and a new station is going to start operation. That geophone station has the name Bjarghús. I expect Bjarghús geophone station to be up and running around 20-December-2013 at the latest.

Thanks for the support.

June 15, 2013

Update on Skeiðflöt geophone hard drive issue

I am now monitoring the hard drive issue. This might not have been a hard drive failure as I did first think, this might have been a SATA – Bios issue for some reason. I am not sure on the details yet. If things work properly in the next 48 hours, it is a bug in the bios of the computer. Rather then a failing hard drive as I did first think. If that is the case, I do not have to turn the computer off as I planned.

June 14, 2013

Skeiðflöt geophone going off-line due to hard drive failure

Due to a hard drive failure the geophone station of Skeiðflöt is going off-line. I have to do this to protect the data on the hard drive until it can be replaced. When I write this I am currently running a hard drive check on it (and I hope it works after that). Once that is finished, I am going to turn the computer off until I can replace the hard drive with a new one. When that is going to happen I do not know yet, at latest this is going to take place in December when I go to Iceland over Christmas.

There is nothing I can due at the moment, since I do not have the money to buy (I am poor person) a new hard drive for the computer. I am also not sure if anyone locally can fix the computer, and clone the hard drive for me (as I plan to due in order to save me setting Windows XP up again from scratch, if I can do so to start with). Until the Skeiðflöt geophone computer can be fixed, it is going to remain off-line.

My next geophone to Katla volcano, in the case something happens is Heklubyggð geophone. All my geophones can be viewed here on my geophone web page.

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