The following abstract was presented at the 1994 meeting of the Eastern
Section of the Seismological Society of America held in Columbia, SC.

An updated, and more complete, description of the BILLIKEN stations is now
available:

     Mitchell, B.J., and R. Buland, BILLIKEN, Seism. Res. Lttrs., 70, 341-347,
     1999.

BILLIKEN - A Broad-Band Intracratonic Large-apperture, Low-noise,
Informational, Kooperative, Earth-observing Network in the central
United States

MITCHELL, B.J., Dept. of Earth & Atm. Sci., Saint Louis University,
St. Louis, MO 63103
TAGGART, J.N., U.S. Geological Survey, MS 967, Box 25046, Denver,
CO 80225
BUTLER, R., IRIS, 1616 N. Ft. Myer Dr., Suite 1050, Arlington, VA
22209
MURPHY, A.J., U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Comm., MS NL/S-217, Washington,
DC, 20555

A new seismic network is currently being installed in the central
United States. It consists of seven stations which cover an area
from Wisconsin in the north to Arkansas in the south and from
Indiana in the east to Kansas in the west. These stations will
supplement the Central Mississippi Valley Network which has been
operated by Saint Louis University since 1974 and which is
currently being upgraded by Saint Louis University and the University
of Memphis in a cooperative project. Whereas the Central Mississippi
Valley Network has been used to study details of the New Madrid
Seismic Zone and adjacent regions, BILLIKEN will allow detection
and location of events over a broad region of the central United 
States, will be useful  in studies of broad-scale elastic and
anelastic properties of the crust and upper mantle in a stable
cratonic region, and will permit the study of larger New Madrid
events that might be off scale at short recording distances.

All but one of the stations will be part of the U.S. National
Seismic Network and we anticipate that three of them (Cathredal 
Cave, MO - CCM, Dunbar Cave, TN - DCT, and Wyandotte Cave, IN -
WCI) will also be IRIS stations. They will have Streckheisen STS-1
seismometers and IRIS station processors, thus allowing broad-band
recording between about 5 Hz and 360 s, while the remaining stations
have Streckheisen STS-2 seismometers and USNSN processors that record
ground motion between about 10 Hz and 100 s. All stations will transmit
data by satellite to the USGS installation at Golden, CO from where it
will be relayed to SLU and other organizations that are capable of
receiving it. Data from the three IRIS stations will also be accessible
by dial-up.

All station sites are remote from any major cultural activity and are
in places where the seismometers can be placed directly on bedrock,
either in limestone caves or on the surface in areas that are free
of trees and other factors that might produce high background noise.
BILLIKEN is the result of cooperative efforts by Saint Louis Univeristy,
the U.S. Geological Survey, IRIS, and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
 
Go to Brian Mitchell's home page

Go to the Earthquake Center

Go to the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences home page