Reviews

Exploiting Seismic Waveforms: Correlation, Heterogeneity and Inversion, by Brian L. N. Kennett and Andreas Fichtner, ISBN 978-1-108-82878-9, 2021, Cambridge University Press, 502 p. Hyperspectral Remote Sensing: Theory and Applications, by Prem Chandra Pandey et al., ISBN 978-0-081-02894-0, 2020, Elsevier, 506 p.

First Results for the Selection of Repeating Earthquakes in the Eastern Tien Shan (China)

This research is the first stage of seeking repeating earthquakes sequences (RES) in the modern orogeny active zones. The main idea is to find the possible influence of space weather parameters on the seismic process. This is the reason why I am interested in the satellite CSES-01 data. It is a tool that has monitored Earth’s seismo-electromagnetic activity since 2018. Presuming the “ionosphere-atmosphere-lithosphere” relation exists, it is necessary to involve both satellite and ground-based observational data. The seeking of the triggering mechanism still requires additional analysis of consistent geophysical ground-based networks (geomagnetic and seismic). The stations’ coordinates and instruments are presented. In this work, an earthquake catalog (NEIC) of 400 earthquakes with 2.5+ magnitude from 2015 to 2020 was used. The earthquakes epicenters are illustrated on Google Earth basemap (Landsat image) with geologic linear faults. It could help to find any correlation with relief surface or shear zones, which could be areas of nucleation. Some earthquake clusters were found in the Eastern Tien Shan (region of China), on the border with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, due to the K-means algorithm. Clustering helps group earthquakes into small families for further cross-correlation of seismic waveforms and the best match selection between the neighbors.

Focal Mechanism Analysis of the September 25th, 2019 Mw 6.5 Ambon Earthquake and Its Implication for Seismotectonics

On September 25th, 2019, an Mw 6.5 earthquake occurred in Ambon, Maluku Province, Indonesia, and caused casualties and infrastructures damages. The epicenter located in a tectonically active region with the potential strike-slip and thrust faulting earthquake sources, yet the responsible fault is still not well understood. Based on focal mechanism solutions from available seismological agencies, i.e. USGS, GFZ, GCMT, and BMKG, the earthquake has a similar strike-slip focal mechanism, although there are discrepancies on detailed source parameters. To provide a better understanding of the earthquake mechanism and seismotectonic, we apply the Cut-and-Paste (CAP) focal mechanism inversion method to broadband seismic waveforms from regional and teleseismic distances. The CAP inversion results on the regional data grouped in different distance ranges show a robust strike-slip solution. We then refine the earthquake focal depth by performing the CAPtele inversion and resulted in a depth of 12 km with similar fault plane solution as the regionals. The ruptured fault plane is resolved by a directivity analysis using azimuthal pattern of the apparent source durations, which indicates an obvious unilateral rupture propagation toward SSE direction. Our result suggests the NNW-SSE orientated fault is the ruptured fault plane, which is also consistent with the near N-S distributed aftershocks. This fault is located in a narrow sea between Seram, Ambon and Haruku island and was not reported yet in previous studies. The Coulomb failure stress (CFS) changes analysis of the mainshock shows that the Ambon earthquake has promoted the off-fault aftershocks which occurred to the west of the ruptured fault.

The behaviour of near-surface soils through ultrasonic near-surface inundation testing

Seismometers installed within the upper metre of the subsurface can experience significant variability in signal propagation and attenuation properties of observed arrivals due to meteorological events. For example, during rain events, both the time and frequency representations of observed seismic waveforms can be significantly altered, complicating potential automatic signal processing efforts. Historically, a lack of laboratory equipment to explicitly investigate the effects of active inundation on seismic wave properties in the near surface prevented recreation of the observed phenomena in a controlled environment. Presented herein is a new flow chamber designed specifically for near-surface seismic wave/fluid flow interaction phenomenology research, the ultrasonic near-surface inundation testing device and new vp-saturation and vs-saturation relationships due to the effects of matric suction on the soil fabric.

Robust K-means algorithm with weighted window for seismic facies analysis

Seismic facies analysis can generate a map to describe the spatial distribution characteristics of reservoirs, and therefore plays a critical role in seismic interpretation. To analyse the characteristics of the horizon of interest, it is usually necessary to extract seismic waveforms along the target horizon using a selected time window. The inaccuracy of horizon interpretation often produces some inconsistent phases and leads to inaccurate classification. Therefore, the developed adaptive phase K-means algorithm proposed a sliding time window to extract seismic waveforms. However, setting the maximum offset of the sliding window is difficult in a real data application. A value that is too large may cause the cross-layer problem, whereas a value that is too small reduces the flexibility of the algorithm. To address this disadvantage, this paper proposes a robust K-means (R-K-means) algorithm with a Gaussian-weighted sliding window for seismic waveform classification. The used weights punish those windows distant from the interpretation horizon in the objective function, consequently producing a smaller range of horizon adjustments even when using relatively large maximum offsets and benefitting the generation of stable and reliable seismic facies maps. The application of real seismic data from the F3 block proves the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Seismic Performance of Dam Piers Retrofitted with Reinforced Polymer Cement Mortar

The deterioration of existing reinforced concrete (RC) structures is regarded as a problem worldwide. In Japan especially, the deterioration of RC dam structures has become severe. Many such dams meet design standards that were in place at the time of construction but do not meet the current seismic design standards, and appropriate seismic retrofitting is required. If the dam pier, which is an important part of the dam related to water storage, is damaged by an earthquake, the gate cannot be opened or closed, and the amount of water stored cannot be controlled. Therefore, the seismic retrofitting of dam piers is a top priority. However, various construction restrictions exist for dam piers, such as only the cross-section on the downstream side can be reinforced, and not on the upstream side where water is stored. Thus, it is difficult to apply the same reinforcement method that is applied to the piers of general road bridges. Therefore, in this study, we confirm the effectiveness of the SRS method (seismic retrofitting using cement mortar for shotcrete), which is suitable for partial reinforcement. Specifically, the dam piers of four types of existing dams were modeled using the three-dimensional finite element method, and a seismic response analysis was performed by inputting two types of seismic waveforms having different characteristics. As a result, the reinforcement effect of this method was verified according to structural characteristics. Furthermore, the effect of the reinforcement range on the reinforcement effect was clarified.

Identification of Similar Seismic Waves Using the Phase-Only Correlation Function and Wavelet Transform

Accurately determined acoustic emission (AE) locations provide significant information on fracture systems, such as the orientation of fractures in a geothermal reservoir. To determine the relative source locations among a group of seismic events, similar AE waveforms must be detected and the relative arrival times of the P and S waves must be determined. In this paper, a method to identify similar AE waveforms is proposed, in which wavelet transform scalograms are used to determine the phase-only correlation function. The proposed method was applied to arbitrarily selected seismic waveforms, and its feasibility was evaluated by comparing the results with those obtained when the phase-only correlation function was obtained by using Fourier transform results.

Ocean-bottom and surface seismometers reveal continuous glacial tremor and slip

Shearing along subduction zones, laboratory experiments on analogue faults, and sliding along glacier beds are all associated with aseismic and co-seismic slip. In this study, an ocean-bottom seismometer is deployed near the terminus of a Greenlandic tidewater glacier, effectively insulating the signal from the extremely noisy surface seismic wavefield. Continuous, tide-modulated tremor related to ice speed is recorded at the bed of the glacier. When noise interference (for example, due to strong winds) is low, the tremor is also confirmed via analysis of seismic waveforms from surface stations. The signal resembles the tectonic tremor commonly observed during slow-earthquake events in subduction zones. We propose that the glacier sliding velocity can be retrieved from the observed seismic noise. Our approach may open new opportunities for monitoring calving-front processes in one of the most difficult-to-access cryospheric environments.

Mapping full seismic waveforms to vertical velocity profiles by deep learning

Building realistic and reliable models of the subsurface is the primary goal of seismic imaging. Here we construct an ensemble of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) to build velocity models directly from the data. Most other approaches attempt to map full data into 2D labels. We exploit the regularity of seismic acquisition and train CNNs to map gathers of neighboring common midpoints (CMPs) to vertical 1D velocity logs. This allows us to integrate well-log data into the inversion, simplify the mapping by using the 1D labels, and accommodate larger dips relative to using single CMP inputs. We dynamically generate the training data in parallel with training the CNNs, which reduces overfitting. Data generation and training of the CNNs is more computationally expensive than conventional full-waveform inversion (FWI). However, once the network is trained, data sets with similar acquisition parameters can be inverted much faster than with FWI. The multiCMP CNN ensemble is tested on multiple realistic synthetic models, performs well, and was combined with FWI for even better performance.