Joint microseismic event location and anisotropic velocity inversion with the cross double-difference method using downhole microseismic data

Geophysics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 85 (3) ◽  
pp. KS63-KS73
Author(s):  
Yangyang Ma ◽  
Congcong Yuan ◽  
Jie Zhang

We have applied the cross double-difference (CDD) method to simultaneously determine the microseismic event locations and five Thomsen parameters in vertically layered transversely isotropic media using data from a single vertical monitoring well. Different from the double-difference (DD) method, the CDD method uses the cross-traveltime difference between the S-wave arrival time of one event and the P-wave arrival time of another event. The CDD method can improve the accuracy of the absolute locations and maintain the accuracy of the relative locations because it contains more absolute information than the DD method. We calculate the arrival times of the qP, qSV, and SH waves with a horizontal slowness shooting algorithm. The sensitivities of the arrival times with respect to the five Thomsen parameters are derived using the slowness components. The derivations are analytical, without any weak anisotropic approximation. The input data include the cross-differential traveltimes and absolute arrival times, providing better constraints on the anisotropic parameters and event locations. The synthetic example indicates that the method can produce better event locations and anisotropic velocity model. We apply this method to the field data set acquired from a single vertical monitoring well during a hydraulic fracturing process. We further validate the anisotropic velocity model and microseismic event locations by comparing the modeled and observed waveforms. The observed S-wave splitting also supports the inverted anisotropic results.

Geophysics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. KS183-KS194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiao Tian ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Jie Zhang

The double-difference (DD) location method has long been applied for locating a cluster of earthquakes with data recorded at surface seismic stations. This method has also been used for locating microseismic events with multiple monitoring wells during hydraulic fracturing. We first extended the approach for locating a cluster of microseismic events with data recorded from a single well. To do this, we have reduced the 3D location problem to 2D by projecting all of the events onto a vertical ([Formula: see text]) plane, with a vertical [Formula: see text]-axis and a horizontal [Formula: see text]-axis representing the distance to the monitoring well, considering the symmetric character of the 1D velocity model and the vertical monitoring well. We then performed a 2D location inversion and projected the results back to 3D using the event azimuths, which were determined from a separate analysis of the initial P-wave polarizations. However, although the DD method could determine relative locations of events reasonably well, it yielded poor absolute locations. We have developed a cross DD (CDD) approach using the cross traveltime difference between the P-wave arrival of one event and the S-wave arrival of another event for inversion instead of the arrival-time differences of the same phases as in the DD method. The CDD method contains more information on absolute locations than the DD method, resulting in a much more stable absolute location determination. The synthetic and field data tests indicated that the CDD method could improve the accuracy of relative and absolute event locations in microseismic clusters.


Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (1) ◽  
pp. B41-B57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Himanshu Barthwal ◽  
Mirko van der Baan

Microseismicity is recorded during an underground mine development by a network of seven boreholes. After an initial preprocessing, 488 events are identified with a minimum of 12 P-wave arrival-time picks per event. We have developed a three-step approach for P-wave passive seismic tomography: (1) a probabilistic grid search algorithm for locating the events, (2) joint inversion for a 1D velocity model and event locations using absolute arrival times, and (3) double-difference tomography using reliable differential arrival times obtained from waveform crosscorrelation. The originally diffusive microseismic-event cloud tightens after tomography between depths of 0.45 and 0.5 km toward the center of the tunnel network. The geometry of the event clusters suggests occurrence on a planar geologic fault. The best-fitting plane has a strike of 164.7° north and dip angle of 55.0° toward the west. The study region has known faults striking in the north-northwest–south-southeast direction with a dip angle of 60°, but the relocated event clusters do not fall along any mapped fault. Based on the cluster geometry and the waveform similarity, we hypothesize that the microseismic events occur due to slips along an unmapped fault facilitated by the mining activity. The 3D velocity model we obtained from double-difference tomography indicates lateral velocity contrasts between depths of 0.4 and 0.5 km. We interpret the lateral velocity contrasts in terms of the altered rock types due to ore deposition. The known geotechnical zones in the mine indicate a good correlation with the inverted velocities. Thus, we conclude that passive seismic tomography using microseismic data could provide information beyond the excavation damaged zones and can act as an effective tool to complement geotechnical evaluations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 881 ◽  
pp. 89-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asri Wulandari ◽  
Ade Anggraini ◽  
Wiwit Suryanto

Yogyakarta earthquake, Mw 6.3, 27 May 2006 had killed 5,571 victims and destroyed more than 1 million buildings. This incident became the most destructive earthquake disaster over the last 11 years in Indonesia. Earthquake mitigation plan in the area has been carried out by understands the location of the fault. The location of the fault is still unclear among geoscientists until now. In this case, analysis of the aftershocks using oct-tree importance sampling method was applied to support the location of the fault that responsible for the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake. Oct-tree importance sampling is a method that is recursively subdividing the solution domain into exactly eight children for estimating properties of a particular distribution. The final result of the subdividing process is a cell that has a maximum Probability Density Function (PDF) and identified as the location of the hypocenter. Input data consists of the arrival time of the P wave and S wave of the aftershocks catalog from 3-7 June 2006 and the coordinate of the 12 seismometers, and 1D velocity model of the study area. Based on the hypocenter distribution of the aftershocks data with the proposed method show a clearer trend of the fault compared with the aftershocks distribution calculated with theHypo71program. The fault trend has a strike orientation of N 42° E with a dip angle of 80° parallel with the fault scarp along the Opak River at the distance of about 15 km to the east. This fault trend is similar with the fault orientation obtained using the Double Difference Algorithm.


2009 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastiano Imposa ◽  
Jean-Pierre Fourno ◽  
Rosario Raffaele ◽  
Antonio Scaltrito ◽  
Luciano Scarfi

AbstractA one-dimensional velocity model and station corrections for the Middle-Durance fault zone (south-eastern France) were computed by inverting P-wave arrival times recorded on a local seismic network of 8 stations. A total of 93 local events with a minimum of 6 P-phases, RMS 0.4 s and a maximum gap of 220° were selected. Comparison with previous earthquake locations shows an improvement for the relocated earthquakes. Tests were carried out to verify the robustness of inversion results in order to corroborate the conclusions drawn from our findings. The obtained minimum 1-D velocity model can be used to improve routine earthquake locations and represents a further step toward more detailed seismotectonic studies in this area of south-eastern France.


1973 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 819-825
Author(s):  
L. Chuaqui

abstract A simplified model of the crust and upper mantle of central Chile is developed with P- and S-wave arrival times and is compared with previous gravimetric work on the area. The following structural parameters were determined: crustal P-wave velocity, upper mantle P-wave velocity, crustal thickness and orientation of the plane separating crust and upper mantle. The model obtained here agrees well with those calculated in the gravimetric study.


2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 2015
Author(s):  
V. Kapetanidis ◽  
P. Papadimitriou ◽  
K. Makropoulos

Local seismological networks provide data that allow the location of microearthquakes which otherwise would be dismissed due to low magnitudes and low signal-to-noise ratios of their seismic signals. The Corinth Rift Laboratory (CRL) network, installed in the western Corinth rift, has been providing digital waveform data since 2000. In this work, a semi-automatic picking technique has been applied which exploits the similarity between waveforms of events that have occurred in approximately the same area of an active fault. Similarity is measured by the crosscorrelation maxi-mum of full signals. Events with similar waveforms are grouped in multiplet clusters using the nearest-neighbour linkage algorithm. Manually located events act as masters, while automatically located events of each multiplet cluster act as slaves. By cross-correlating the P-wave or S-wave segments of a master event with the corresponding segments of each of its slave events, after appropriately aligning their offsets, the measured time-lag at the cross-correlation maximum can be subtracted from the arrival-time of the slave event. After the correction of the arrival-times, a double-difference technique is applied to the modified catalogue to further improve the locations of clusters and distinguish the active seismogenic structures in the tectonically complex Western Corinth rift.


Geophysics ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 508-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Nagano ◽  
H. Niitsuma ◽  
N. Chubachi

An automatic acoustic emission (AE) source location algorithm has been developed for downhole AE measurement of subsurface cracks by using the triaxial hodogram method. The P-wave arrival time is detected by analyzing crosscorrelation coefficients among three components of AE signal energy; the P-wave direction is determined by the method of least squares. For detection of S-wave arrival time, a maximum‐likelihood method analyzes a distribution of instantaneous values of the SH-wave component amplitude. This algorithm can locate an AE source as accurately as human analysis. For field measurements, it takes less than 4 s to locate an AE source using a 16-bit personal computer with a program in C language. Automatic AE source location by the triaxial hodogram method has been realized with this algorithm.


1991 ◽  
Vol 81 (5) ◽  
pp. 1705-1725
Author(s):  
Susan Y. Schwartz ◽  
Glenn D. Nelson

Abstract Aftershocks of the 18 October 1989 Loma Prieta, California, earthquake are located using S-P arrival-time measurements from stations of the PASSCAL aftershock deployment. We demonstrate the effectiveness of using S-P arrival-time data in locating earthquakes recorded by a sparse three-component network. Events are located using the program QUAKE3D (Nelson and Vidale, 1990) with both 2-D and 3-D velocity models that have been developed independently for this region. The dense coverage of the area around the Loma Prieta rupture zone by instruments of the California Network (CALNET) has allowed the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to find P-wave earthquake locations for both velocity models, which we compare with our solutions. We also perform synthetic calculations to estimate realistic location errors resulting from uncertainties in both the 3-D velocity structure and the timing of arrivals. These calculations provide a comparison of location accuracies obtained using S-P arrival times, S and P arrival times, and P times alone. We estimate average absolute errors in epicentral location and in depth for the Loma Prieta aftershocks to be just under 2 km and 1 km, respectively, using S-P phase data and the sparse PASSCAL instrument coverage. The synthetic tests show that these errors are much smaller than those predicted using P-wave data alone and are nearly the same as those predicted using S- and P-phase data separately. This suggests that future aftershock recording deployments with sparse networks of three-component data can retrieve accurate event locations even if absolute timing is problematic. We find moderate differences between our locations and those determined by the USGS from a larger network of stations; however, common characteristics in both seismicity patterns are apparent. Neither set of locations yields earthquake patterns that can be easily interpreted in terms of simple faulting geometries. The absence of a simple pattern in both sets of earthquake locations indicates that this complexity is not the result of earthquake mislocation but is a genuine feature of the seismicity. A deep southwesterly dipping plane and a near-vertical fault extending from the surface to at least 7-km depth beneath the surface trace of the San Andreas Fault are imaged by both sets of earthquake locations. Although earthquake locations indicate the existence of many more fault segments, the complexity of this region requires that a definitive picture of the faulting geometry will have to await improvement in our knowledge of the P- and S-wave velocity structures.


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