About the Lending Pool

 We support no-cost loans of Gem infrasound loggers to support work by scientists for a range of disciplines and research.  The Gem lending program is supported by NSF award EAR-2122188.

How to Apply for a Sensor Loan

Use this form to submit a loan request. Please read the policies below before submitting an application.

Lending Pool Policies

Application Submission: For full consideration, applications should be submitted 6 months before it is necessary to receive sensors. We will try to accommodate loan requests with more rapid timeline requests, but can not guarantee stock. 

Project Duration: Borrowers must specify project duration and intended date of sensor return.  Projects with shorter durations (e.g., less than 6 months) may receive priority. Extension may be possible after the sensors are delivered and closer to the return date if sensors are not booked. 

Risks: Field deployments pose various risks to sensors. Applicants should disclose risks to the sensors in their application. Risk to sensors or inability to pay for replacements does not disqualify an application; however, the scientific return should justify the risk. From the lending pool's perspective, ability to pay for replacement sensors mitigates but does not eliminate risk as a consideration.  Lending pool recipients agree in good faith to take care of sensors to the best of their abilities realizing the resource is shared and finite.  Sensor loss or damage may be grounds for loan refusal in the future.

Shipping: The lending pool will arrange and pay for domestic shipping from Boise State to the recipient and back. International shipping from Boise State to the recipient and back must be arranged and paid for by applicants. Applicants should return sensors in the same or similar packaging to how they received them. 

Training: New Gem users are requested to attend a mandatory Zoom training of hardware and software usage that should last 30 minutes or less.   Additional instruction is available upon request. 

Sharing data: Gem borrowers must upload waveform data to IRIS-DMC or similar repository at the end of the recording campaign; exceptions may be arranged in advance with the instrument pool. To help improve Gem performance, at the end of the project, users must complete a form describing their experience with the instruments. Users may be asked to provide state-of-health data, or non-sensitive waveform data if waveform-related malfunctions occur.

Acknowledging the instrument pool: To help spread awareness of the lending pool, provide information on the specs and capabilities of Gem infrasound loggers, and give the lending pool credit for its work, any publications by instrument pool users must do the following:

• Acknowledge the instrument pool with the text "We used instrumentation from the Gem Lending Pool to record data in this publication." 

• When describing instrumentation used in the study, cite the most up-to-date publication on the Gem. Currently, this is Anderson, J. F., Johnson, J. B., Bowman, D. C., & Ronan, T. J. (2018). The Gem infrasound logger and custom‐built instrumentation. Seismological Research Letters, 89(1), 153-164.

Allocating Sensors: 

Sensors will be allocated as applications for scientific study are received.  In order to give many groups time to apply for sensor loans, a decision should not be expected more than 6 months before the project start date. Applying more than 6 months in advance makes it more likely that Gems will be available for your project. For proposals submitted less than six months before the project start, we aim to notify applicants within 1 month of application, but at least 2 weeks before their project start for urgent applications. Loans will initially be limited to 12 sensors to a group/project, but may be expanded if enough sensors are still available within 2 months of the start date. 

For times when more sensors are requested than are available, decisions on how to allocate them will consider urgency, equity (among research fields and users), scientific impact, and impact on pool sensor availability (sensor-months of use), informed by answers provided in the applications. Additionally, as an NSF-funded project, we give preference to NSF-funded projects and PIs who are eligible for NSF funding. The pool administrator may solicit more information from applicants before making decisions. Once allocation decisions are made and applicants informed, the decision is final unless sensors unexpectedly become available (e.g., a different project is cancelled).