James O S Hammond, Richard W England, Nick Rawlinson, Andrew Curtis, Karin Sigloch, Nicholas Harmon , Brian Baptie

It is an exciting time to be a seismologist. In November 2018, the InSight lander touched down on Mars and the first seismometer was deployed on another planet. This incredible feat means planetary seismologists are currently searching for marsquakes and will hopefully soon be providing images of its interior and helping us to understand how rocky planets form. However, we have been doing this for a long time in more familiar territory back home on Earth, where the field of terrestrial seismology has reached a turning point with significant developments in instrumentation and the manner of their deployment in recent years. However, equipment available to the UK community has not kept pace and needs urgent regeneration if the UK is to lead in the field of passive seismology in the future. To begin the process of redesigning the UK’s equipment for the next few decades, the British Geophysical Association sponsored a meeting in Edinburgh in late 2018 to discuss the future of passive seismic acquisition. What follows is a historical account of how and why we arrived at the present day UK seismological research and resource base, a summary of the Edinburgh meeting, and a vision for the passive seismic facilities required to support the next 20 years of seismological research.