Recently, NERC funded a new seismological equipment pool for use on land, consisting of 3-component Smart Solos and 1-component nodes. This will be held in Cambridge, care of Nick Rawlinson, and will be available for use by our community. We (below) contacted a number of other people who own seismological equipment and constructed an initial inventory of instruments held in the UK and Ireland. To demonstrate and explore the power of seismology, it would be great to put all of this excellent and diverse equipment to good, local use.

Inspired by the vision of the British Geophysical Association, to bring our community together for greater purpose, we would therefore like to suggest that a suitable target for integrated study using all of the instruments in a single array, might be the subsurface of the UK and Ireland. As food for thought, we constructed a survey design that distributes the equipment inventory across this geographical area as evenly as possible.

Both the equipment inventory, and the array design, are available in a green paper.

The green paper is offered only as a stimulus to start a discussion about this possibility across our Geophysical community: to generate ideas for possible sub-targets for detailed study, and to articulate possible motivations and justifications. For example, non-seismological equipment and objectives could be added, specific important subsurface targets might become areas of focus, and new applications would provide additional inspiration.

In the spirit of openness, we therefore invite the community to co-create this document using the link above, by contributing ideas to the section at the end of the green paper and adding your interest to any existing ideas, so that we can all consider and discuss them. Please also forward this email to any colleagues or collaborators who might be interested, but who may not be signed up to this mailing list.

A discussion meeting will be held at the Royal Astronomical Society, London on 10 October 2025 (hybrid, live-stream option available) at which we propose to discuss all options, and hopefully narrow down to a community-driven plan and proposal.