Introducing Novices to Active-Source Seismology via SeismicUnixGui

Abstract Since its origin in 1998, the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology Undergraduate Research Internship Program, which has now been integrated into EarthScope, has benefited 262 students, helping them to initiate their careers in research and industry. From 2006 onward, interns have participated in a weeklong introductory program in active-source and earthquake seismology that emphasized field data collection, analysis, and interpretation in the classroom. Here, we describe an active-source seismology experience in which we adopted the well-known 2D, seismic reflection processing software package, Seismic Unix (SU). To encourage critical understanding of the seismic data, within the limited time frame of the instructional program, we created a new graphical user interface (GUI): SeismicUnixGui (SUG). SUG facilitates interactive testing of parameters on visual outputs, with single, mouse-driven clicks. SUG software is free, open-source with cross-platform capability. SUG runs on Linux-based systems such as Ubuntu or the Microsoft Windows Subsystem for Linux. SUG for Windows Desktop and older Apple PC platforms that use Intel processors is distributed as a Docker image. Development of SUG for more recent Apple silicon-based platforms is currently underway. Perl-based software wrappers give access to 290 SU and third-party programs that are used for a range of fundamental signal analysis functions including data format manipulation, integral transforms, seismic-waveform modeling, poststack time migration, and various image displays and manual data picking. SUG enforces a manageable, predefined directory structure to generate shareable bash and Perl scripts, which work independently of the GUI itself. The free, open, and downloadable code is accompanied by an installation manual, a demonstration field data set collected by student interns, and a tutorial with examples of the working scripts employed by the students to process the data during orientation week.