AmericanChemicalSociety.com

Prior to recording seismic data over the target (Ruby Range low-angle normal faults in Nevada), federal permits are required, since most land in the area is Federal (DoA US Forest Service and DoI Bureau of Land Management).  Since 2003, when I last received Federal permits from these agencies for seismic work in Nevada (in the course of previous PRF-funded research), the permit process has become considerably more burdensome, requiring more personnel time both from the researcher and from the Federal agencies particularly in order to satisfy regulations of the State Historical Preservation Act. Following an 11-day trip by myself to Elko Nevada, including seven days working with professional archeologists to visit all sites and inventory their contents, the permitting process is well in hand.  However, the seismic acquisition, projected to have started this summer, has now been delayed until next summer (2010).  We have avoided spending student stipend during this pre-acquisition period, and anticipate that we will need to request an extension of our grant into a third year (while remaining within our current budget). 

Considerable effort was spent this year to obtain access to existing industry data around our target, but the original owners have sold their interests to a third party that has not (yet) been willing to allow access without purchase (which would cost many times our total budget).  In lieu of these old but high-resolution data-sets, we are now going to use modern, lower-resolution data in the public domain.
There are no new scientific results to report at this time.