Schlindwein, Vera; Pilot, Matthias; Schmidt-Aursch, Mechita (2025): Project ALOIS: DEPAS ocean-bottom seismometer operations at the western Gakkel Ridge / Lena Trough in 2022-2023 [dataset]. PANGAEA, https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.984603

This ocean-bottom seismometer deployment is part of an interdisciplinary project examining the Aurora hydrothermal vent field in an attempt to understand its fluid circulation. A total of 8 ocean bottom seismometers modified for the operation in sea ice covered oceans was deployed around Aurora vent field at the intersection of Gakkel Ridge and Lena Trough in the Fram Strait. The aim of the experiment was to monitor seismicity related to the hydrothermal circulation system and to reveal potentially heat reservoirs devoid of seismicity. The network consisted of 8 DEPAS Lobster type broadband OBS. Instruments were free-fall deployed and spaced by about 5-8 km. Their position at the seafloor is known to within few meters from ultrashort baseline positioning system Posidonia. The OBS recorded continuously at 100 Hz for up to 12 months between end of July 2022 and mid July 2023. One instrument (AUR02) had an unreliable seismometer records due to levelling problems. Skew values were obtained for all stations and ranged between -18 s and 12.3 s. Clock drift in this experiment was partially nonlinear. After the skew correction, a nonlinear time drift for stations AUR02, AUR04, AUR06, AUR08 was determined using noise cross-correlation. A best-fit correction was obtained by using skew-corrected station AUR01 as reference station for stations AUR04 and AUR08, while skew-corrected station AUR03 served as reference for stations AUR02 and AUR06. Station specific phase residuals obtained from a manually picked catalog of 492 events were used to further validate the clock drift corrections. For AUR04 a nonlinear phase residual drift was observed and, subsequently, the applied drift polynomial was manually adjusted to minimize resulting residuals.