HKT TOUR: OVERVIEW

Welcome to the overview of the HKT site in the United Salt Corporation mine in Hockley, Texas. HKT is a state-of-the-art seismograph designed to detect and record vibrations from local, regional, and distant earthquakes. The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics maintains the station in cooperation with the USGS NEIC and the IRIS consortium.

	Left: Hockley itself is located about 100 miles east of Austin, just northwest of the Houston suburbs. In most cases, placing a seismograph this close to a large urban area would result in contaminating the interesting seismic signals with cultural noise. However, since cultural noise for the most part contaminates only the uppermost crust, we can avoid such problems if we place the seismometers below ground. The United Salt Corporation mine in Hockley, Texas provides an ideal location for a seismograph unit since the mine tunnels lie about ½ kilometer below the surface.
Station HKT is the first IRIS/GSN station in Texas; the nearest IRIS/GSN stations are located in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Tuscon, Arizona; and in Mexico City. Thus, the Hockley station helps fill the large gap in USNSN and IRIS station coverage throughout the mid-west and along the Gulf coast states [For details on the USNSN, see NEIC USNSN web page] and provides crucial information to the national scientific community. Furthermore, the location of HKT is ideal for studying the Earth's crust and upper mantle structure beneath Texas, the Gulf of Mexico, and Northern Mexico.
	Left:The building housing the mine shaft elevator and processing plant, as seen from the road. Agriculture and ranching dominate the local economy, and much of the salt produced from the mine goes into cattle food.