How Royal Society Industry Fellow Prof. James Hammond is working with STRYDE to expand the frontiers of seismic monitoring.
Technical paper
High resolution soil moisture monitoring: the potential of large-N seismology
Read technical paperTechnical paper
Monitoring the Critical Zone with Ambient Seismic Noise Recorded on a Dense Nodal Array
Read technical paperProf. James Hammond and STRYDE have been awarded a prestigious Royal Society Industry Fellowship, enabling one of the world’s leading seismologists to work directly with STRYDE to advance what is possible in environmental seismology.
Spending 50% of his time embedded within STRYDE, Prof. Hammond is working in close collaboration with the team to advance seismic node technology and accelerate the development of new approaches to environmental monitoring.
Designed to foster long-term, high-impact collaboration between academia and industry, the fellowship ensures that scientific research is translated rapidly into practical innovation.
Through this partnership, academic insight is directly integrated into technology development, contributing to initiatives such as the UK’s Large-N Seismology facility (LeNS-UK) and helping shape the next generation of seismic solutions.
Prof. James Hammond
Birkbeck, University of London
STRYDE
2026–2030
How can we use seismic nodes to develop passive seismology methods to image and monitor the shallow subsurface and open new areas of environmental seismology?
How can we manage the large volumes of data to produce data products required by user demands?
Seismic nodes have revolutionised subsurface imaging in energy exploration, but their potential extends far beyond - opening up new applications that can benefit from the power of seismic technology, including environmental seismology.
Today, environmental scientists face two major barriers:
While dense “large-N” arrays can capture the Earth in extraordinary detail, their use in environmental applications has been limited by data complexity and technology constraints.
STRYDE’s affordable and ultra-lightweight nodal technology enables the rapid deployment of thousands of sensors, delivering:
This capability is already enabling breakthroughs in:
A major barrier to scaling environmental seismology is data. Continuous seismic monitoring can generate terabytes of data per month, far exceeding the capabilities of traditional workflows.
Through this collaboration, STRYDE and Prof. James Hammond are developing new approaches to make large-scale seismic data practical, usable, and accessible.
This includes:
Beyond data, the partnership is advancing seismic technology across key areas:
Working with STRYDE, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of seismic nodes, Prof. James Hammond is leveraging both the technology and the company’s in-house expertise, including seismic specialists, geophysicists, and data processing teams, to expand seismology into new areas of Earth monitoring.
This collaboration supports his broader research ambition to establish a new research-led facility (LeNS-UK), enabling large-N seismology in the UK, while directly influencing the development of next-generation technologies tailored for environmental applications.
"As seismologists, we are adapt at using seismic waves to image the Earth at different scales. Working with STRYDE means we can now deploy thousands of sensors with a density not before possible.
It means we can image and monitor the Earth in new ways, potentially helping us study our changing planet in new ways."
Prof. James Hammond
Professor of Geophysics, School of Natural Sciences, Birkbeck University of London
