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[1] Acoustic wave phenomena in porous media containing multiphase fluids have received considerable attention in recent years because of an increasing scientific awareness of poroelastic behavior in groundwater aquifers. To improve quantitative understanding of these phenomena, a general set of coupled partial differential equations was derived to describe dilatational wave propagation through an elastic porous medium permeated by two immiscible fluids. These equations, from which previous models of dilatational wave propagation can be recovered as special cases, incorporate both inertial coupling and viscous drag in an Eulerian frame of reference. Two important poroelasticity concepts, the linearized increment of fluid content and the closure relation for porosity change, originally defined for an elastic porous medium containing a single fluid, also are generalized for a two-fluid system. To examine the impact of relative fluid saturation and wave excitation frequency (50, 100, 150, and 200 Hz) on free dilatational wave behavior in unconsolidated porous media, numerical simulations of the three possible modes of wave motion were conducted for Columbia fine sandy loam containing either an air-water or oil-water mixture. The results showed that the propagating (P1) mode, which results from in-phase motions of the solid framework and the two pore fluids, moves with a speed equal to the square root of the ratio of an effective bulk modulus to an effective density of the fluid-containing porous medium, regardless of fluid saturation and for both fluid mixtures. The nature of the pore fluids exerts a significant influence on the attenuation of the P1 wave. In the air-water system, attenuation was controlled by material density differences and the relative mobilities of the pore fluids, whereas in the oil-water system an effective kinematic shear viscosity of the pore fluids was the controlling parameter. On the other hand, the speed and attenuation of the two diffusive modes (P2, resulting from out-of-phase motions of the solid framework and the fluids, and P3, the result of capillary pressure fluctuations) were closely associated with an effective dynamic shear viscosity of the pore fluids. The P2 and P3 waves also had the same constant value of the quality factor, and by comparison of our results with previous research on these two dilatational wave modes in sandstones, both were found to be sensitive to the state of consolidation of the porous medium.

Measuring stress changes within seismically active fault zones has been a longsought goal of seismology. Here we show that such stress changes are measurable by exploiting the stress dependence of seismic wave speed from an active source cross-well experiment conducted at the SAFOD drill site. Over a two-month period we observed an excellent anti-correlation between changes in the time required for an S wave to travel through the rock along a fixed pathway -a few microseconds--and variations in barometric pressure. We also observed two large excursions in the traveltime data that are coincident with two earthquakes that are among those predicted to produce the largest coseismic stress changes at SAFOD. Interestingly, the two excursions started approximately 10 and 2 hours before the events, respectively, suggesting that they may be related to pre-rupture stress induced changes in crack properties, as observed in early laboratory studies [1][2] .It is well known from laboratory experiments that seismic velocities vary with the level of applied stress [3][4][5] . Such dependence is attributed to the opening/closing of microcracks due to changes in the stress normal to the crack surface [6][7][8] . In principle, this dependence constitutes a stress meter, provided the induced velocity changes can be 2 measured precisely and continuously. Indeed, there were several attempts in the 1970s to accomplish this goal using either explosive or non explosive surface sources 9-11 . The source repeatability and the precision in traveltime measurement appeared to be the main challenges in making conclusive observations.With the availability of highly repeatable sources, modern data acquisition systems, and advanced computational capability, Yamamura et al. 12 showed compelling evidence that seismic velocity along a baseline in a vault near the coast of Miura Bay, Japan, responds regularly to tidal stress changes. Silver et al. 13 found an unambiguous dependence of seismic velocity on barometric pressure from a series of cross-well experiments at two test sites in California. The stress sensitivity depends primarily on crack density and has a strong nonlinear dependence on confining pressure.Consequently, crack density is expected to decrease rapidly with depth as should stress sensitivity. It is thus unclear whether the stress-induced velocity variations observed at shallow depths [12][13] are still detectable at seismogenic depth.To explore stress sensitivity at seismogenic depth, we have conducted an experiment at Parkfield where adjacent deep wells, the SAFOD (San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth) pilot and main holes (Figure 1), are available. Accurately located seismicity together with the availability of high-quality geophysical data in the Parkfield region make it one of the best areas to detect temporal changes related to the earthquake cycle.A specially-designed 18-element piezoelectric source and a three-component accelerometer were deployed inside the pilot and main holes, respectively, at ~1 km depth (see methods)...

[1] A method is described for the joint use of time-lapse ground-penetrating radar (GPR) travel times and hydrological data to estimate field-scale soil hydraulic parameters. We build upon previous work to take advantage of a wide range of cross-borehole GPR data acquisition configurations and to accommodate uncertainty in the petrophysical function, which relates soil porosity and water saturation to the effective dielectric constant. We first test the inversion methodology using synthetic examples of water injection in the vadose zone. Realistic errors in the petrophysical function result in substantial errors in soil hydraulic parameter estimates, but such errors are minimized through simultaneous estimation of petrophysical parameters. In some cases the use of a simplified GPR simulator causes systematic errors in calculated travel times; simultaneous estimation of a single correction parameter sufficiently reduces the impact of these errors. We also apply the method to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford site in Washington, where time-lapse GPR and neutron probe (NP) data sets were collected during an infiltration experiment. We find that inclusion of GPR data in the inversion procedure allows for improved predictions of water content, compared to predictions made using NP data alone. These examples demonstrate that the complimentary information contained in geophysical and hydrological data can be successfully extracted in a joint inversion approach. Moreover, since the generation of tomograms is not required, the amount of GPR data required for analyses is relatively low, and difficulties inherent to tomography methods are alleviated. Finally, the approach provides a means to capture the properties and system state of heterogeneous soil, both of which are crucial for assessing and predicting subsurface flow and contaminant transport.

Abstract. A multidisciplinary research team has conducted a field-scale bacterial transport study within an uncontaminated sandy Pleistocene aquifer near Oyster, Virginia. The overall goal of the project was to evaluate the importance of heterogeneities in controlling the field-scale transport of bacteria that are injected into the ground for remediation purposes. Geochemical, hydrological, geological, and geophysical data were collected to characterize the site prior to conducting chemical and bacterial injection experiments. In this paper we focus on results of a hydrogeological characterization effort using geophysical data collected across a range of spatial scales. The geophysical data employed include surface ground-penetrating radar, radar cross-hole tomography, seismic cross-hole tomography, cone penetrometer, and borehole electromagnetic flowmeter. These data were used to interpret the subregional and local stratigraphy, to provide highresolution hydraulic conductivity estimates, and to provide information about the log conductivity spatial correlation function. The information from geophysical data was used to guide and assist the field operations and to constrain the numerical bacterial transport model. Although more field work of this nature is necessary to validate the usefulness and cost-effectiveness of including geophysical data in the characterization effort, qualitative and quantitative comparisons between tomographically obtained flow and transport parameter estimates with hydraulic well bore and bromide breakthrough measurements suggest that geophysical data can provide valuable, high-resolution information. This information, traditionally only partially obtainable by performing extensive and intrusive well bore sampling, may help to reduce the ambiguity associated with hydrogeological heterogeneity that is often encountered when interpreting field-scale bacterial transport data.

In this overview we report results of analysing induced seismicity in geothermal reservoirs in various tectonic settings within the framework of the European Geothermal Engineering Integrating Mitigation of Induced Seismicity in Reservoirs (GEISER) project. In the reconnaissance phase of a field, the subsurface fault mapping, in situ stress and the seismic network are of primary interest in order to help assess the geothermal resource. The hypocentres of the observed seismic events (seismic cloud) are dependent on the design of the installed network, the used velocity model and the applied location technique. During the stimulation phase, the attention is turned to reservoir hydraulics (e.g., fluid pressure, injection volume) and its relation to larger magnitude seismic events, their source characteristics and occurrence in space and time. A change in isotropic components of the full waveform moment tensor is observed for events close to the injection well (tensile character) as compared to events further away from the injection well (shear character). Tensile events coincide with high Gutenberg-Richter -values and low Brune stress drop values. The stress regime in the reservoir controls the direction of the fracture growth at depth, as indicated by the extent of the seismic cloud detected. Stress magnitudes are important in multiple stimulation of wells, where little or no seismicity is observed until the previous maximum stress level is exceeded (Kaiser Effect). Prior to drilling, obtaining a 3D -wave ( ) and -wave velocity ( ) model down to reservoir depth is recommended. In the stimulation phase, we recommend to monitor and to locate seismicity with high precision (decametre) in real-time and to perform local 4D tomography for velocity ratio ( / ). During exploitation, one should use observed and model induced seismicity to forward estimate seismic hazard so that field operators are in a position to adjust well hydraulics (rate and volume of the fluid injected) when induced events start to occur far away from the boundary of the seismic cloud.

We have conducted a series of cross-well experiments to continuously measure in situ temporal variations in seismic velocity at two test sites: building 64 (B64) and Richmond Field Station (RFS) of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. A piezoelectric source was used to generate highly repeatable signals, and a string of 24 hydrophones was used to record the signals. The B64 experiment was conducted utilizing two boreholes 17 m deep and 3 m apart for ϳ160 h. At RFS, we collected a 36-day continuous record in a cross-borehole facility using two 70-m-deep holes separated by 30 m. With signal enhancement techniques we were able to achieve a precision of ϳ6.0 nsec and ϳ10 nsec in delay-time estimation from stacking of 1-hr records during the ϳ7and ϳ35-day observation periods at the B64 and RFS sites, which correspond to 3 and 0.5 ppm of their travel times, respectively. Delay time measured at B64 has a variation of ϳ2 lsec in the 160-hr period and shows a strong and positive correlation with the barometric pressure change at the site. At RFS, after removal of a linear trend, we find a delay-time variation of ϳ2.5 lsec, which exhibits a significant negative correlation with barometric pressure. We attribute the observed correlations to stress sensitivity of seismic velocity known from laboratory studies. The positive and negative sign observed in the correlation is likely related to the expected near-and far-field effects of this stress dependence in a poroelastic medium. The stress sensitivity is estimated to be ϳ10 ‫6מ‬ / Pa and ϳ10 ‫7מ‬ /Pa at the B64 and RFS site, respectively.

Hazard may be reduced by managing injection activities