Issue 1 · The Backscatter

Welcome to the first issue of The Backscatter, a newsletter for geoscientists and engineers working in fiber-optic sensing. The plan is simple: each month we send you things we found interesting or useful, with a focus on software, datasets, jobs, and events.

Do you have something to contribute, or want to help produce the newsletter? Email us at hello@thebackscatter.org.

Featured Signal

This month’s featured signal is from Kang et al. (2025), who used cow-generated surface waves recorded by DAS to invert for shallow shear-wave velocity structure in a cow pasture in Switzerland. Here we see the emergence of a brand-new field, optical bovine seismology!

Three days of DAS strain rate on a grazed slope in Switzerland: cow ground impacts sending surface waves along the cable, their frequency content, and slower daily and rain-driven strain signals with precipitation — (a) Cow ground impacts send surface waves along the cable; (b) their spectra; (c) three days of low-frequency strain rate, with daily cycles and rain events; (d) precipitation. A–C mark cable sections. Figure 3 from Kang et al. (2025), CC BY 4.0. View full size.

Collaborator Corner

(A place to connect. Non-commercial in nature.)

The TRANSFORM² project has buried strain-sensing fiber across a fault on the University of Patras campus and is looking for a DSS interrogator to read it.
The Caltech DAS Hub offers years of continuous data from three DAS arrays plus free computing; apply for an account.

Software

(Open-source software used in DFOS)

DAS4Whales is a Python library for marine bioacoustics with DAS.
DASCore is a Python library for DFOS data: I/O, processing, and visualization.
DASexplorer is a desktop app for visualizing, analyzing, and annotating DAS data.
DASPull is a Python tool for downloading public DAS datasets from many repositories.
DASPy is a Python package for DAS data processing, aimed at seismology workflows.
FoBench is a Python toolbox for reading, exploring, and processing fiber-optic sensing files.
SeisBench now supports DAS datasets and ML models.
xdas is a Python framework for DAS data, built for large archives.

Events

Optical Seismology, SSA topical meeting, Kona, Hawaii, 13–16 October.
CTEMPs office hours, DAS/DTS experiment support, online, 4 November.
OFS-30, Optical Fiber Sensors, Raleigh, USA, 30 November–4 December.
AGU26, San Francisco, 7–11 December. Fiber sessions: S001 and S016.
EGU27, Vienna, 4–9 April 2027. Abstracts due 12 January.
SSA 2027, Seattle, 20–24 April 2027.
Call for papers: BSSA special issue on optical seismology and a companion SRL focus section. Due February 2027.

Jobs

PhD: DAS for Arctic railways, UiT, Norway. Deadline 8 October.
PhD: pattern recognition in DAS data, KIT, Germany. Deadline 13 October.
Assistant research professor: DAS and machine learning, Penn State, USA.
Pan postdoctoral fellowship, Rice, USA. Open topic; apply by 25 October.
Field engineer, Sintela, USA. US citizens only.
Postdoc: DAS for lake hydrology and bioacoustics, Rennes, France. Open until filled.
Postdoc: fiber strain sensing and seismic modeling, Sandia, USA. US citizens only.

References

Kang, J., Walter, F., Halter, T., Paitz, P., & Fichtner, A. (2025). Soil slope monitoring with Distributed Acoustic Sensing under wetting and drying cycles. Earth Surface Dynamics, 13(6), 1133–1155. doi:10.5194/esurf-13-1133-2025

This issue’s contributors: Derrick Chambers and Olivier Fontaine.

Got something for a future issue? A paper, a tool, a dataset, or something you ran into in the field: send it along.