I attended an IRIS workshop on expanding community involvement in AfricaArray. This meeting discussed the overview of the AfricaArray and was led by Andrew Nyblade. The goal was to outline new operation and management models that will improve AfricaArray’s foundational capabilities as a multi-use geophysical network. One of the chief recommendations emphasized developing AfricaArray into a realtime, telemetered, low latency, geophysical network. This will help grow the existing science capabilities across the continent, as well as provide international research opportunities to scientists using AfricaArray data. The science targets include solid earth (imaging the African super-plume and continental crustal structure), geodesy (kinematics of plate-spreading and continental rifting), weather and climate, and volcano seismology.
I expect to attend future meetings with an eye to contributing to scientific research in the solid earth community.