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Health & Fitness

"A Node in Every Garden"

Long Beach - Signal Hill Geophysical Survey; What Is It Really?

They came during the day. Without warning. They walked to the front door. They muttered the word, “Node”. I give you a chilling eyewitness account from my next door neighbor: 

“They came by last Friday morning when I was working at home.  I had the front door open with the screen door closed, so I heard their voices and came out to see what was going on.  Two guys in uniforms similar to what you'd see utility company employees wearing were walking all over my patio, waving a scanner-type device around.  I walked up to the screen door and they were oblivious to my presence.  I cleared my throat and said, "Can I help you?" and they said they were scanning for nodes related to a seismic project because they needed to replace the nodes.  I started asking questions -- Are you from the city?  Who gave you permission to do this?  What is the purpose of these nodes?  Will we be informed about what you find? -- and their answers were not very specific.  They said they had the permission of property owners to do this, that the nodes had to be replaced every so often and then one guy went back to the truck and gave me a brochure. "Here's the propaganda," he said, which of course made me feel even better about nodes being embedded nearby to monitor who knows what in addition to the supposed seismic monitoring. Turns out the node they were looking for was in your yard.  They dug a small hole and buried a small sensor and went on their way.” 

Think about that for a moment. They buried a small sensor and went on their way. In my garden. In my garden! In my garden near the bedroom where my wife sleeps. Where my children come to play with their toys. In my garden. (Sorry, that’s a Michael Corleone paraphrase from the Godfather Part II). Ahem. So, what are these “nodes”? 

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Scroll back a couple months. Workers came by our house to ask permission to bury a small seismic device, aka “node”, in the garden in the front of our house. We were told the buried nodes would wirelessly detect seismic data as part of a Long Beach / Signal Hill Geophysical Survey, a project designed to provide high fidelity geologic and seismic fault data in the area of the survey. We glanced at the brochure they gave us and everything seemed fine. “Go for it,” we told the workmen. The node was buried with a bristling green finder tag sticking up out of the soil, and we forgot all about it. Until the workers came by our neighbor’s house last week. 

My neighbor urged me to do some research. Why not? I started with a careful reading of the brochure. One statement, “This information will also give a better understanding of additional oil resource potential…” (emphasis mine), stood out. Oh ho! Oil! Black gold! Texas tea! So that’s what this is about! We’re once again being plundered by The Man! 

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Enough already with the exclamation points. My Spidey Sense was finally tingling. Had my Android BS Meter app been activated during the workers’ first visit, I’m sure it would have been flashing red. Clearly the workers’ insouciant dissembling was troubling, but after studying the science a bit, I’ve come away with keen interest in the technology, overshadowing my ire at being hoodwinked. Here’s what’s going on: The Signal Hill Petroleum (SHP) company has hired NodalSeismic, LLC to place data gathering nodes in the soil in a roughly ten square mile area of Long Beach. There are 5,300 nodes spaced nominally 330 feet apart. (That’s a lot of nodes). Via a technique known as seismic reflection, the nodes detect and record data from acoustic waves generated either by natural seismic phenomena or by acoustic energy input by specialized Vibro-Seis trucks. By correlating the wave and time interval data, a cross section of the subsurface can be produced, enabling an understanding of, among other things, potential faulting sites. Of course, you don’t have to be Wernher Von Braun to realize that they’re using this data to search for oil. But I do believe that the science they are using can be useful in other seismic studies. The video of the Carson earthquake of May 2011 (see video link below), showing a fascinating ripple of seismic waves marching east across Long Beach convinced me of that. 

Many questions remain. Will SHP share the data? How will the public benefit? Is there a data sharing partnership with Cal State Long Beach? Will I be given a few tanks of free gas for basically letting a node crash at my pad for a few months? Any other Patchers have a node in their yard? 

I leave further investigation in the capable hands of the crack Patch journalism staff. 

Resources:

Long Beach – Signal Hill Geophysical Survey: http://lbgeophysical.com/ 

Video of captured motion (seismic waves) resulting from a May 13, 2011 earthquake in Carson, CA. http://www.youtube.com/user/nodalseismic 

ZNodal Systems info: http://www.fairfieldnodal.com/Products/ZFamily/Slideshow/index.html 

Article in Oil & Gas Technology: http://www.oilandgastechnology.net/subind/IOG14/39.html 

Thank you to ML Fulton for helpful suggestions.

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