Locating microearthquake events below complex heterogeneous overburden requires robust location methodologies that can honor multipathing in the seismic wavefield. We have developed two full-waveform event location methods that form a complementary solution for locating earthquakes and simultaneously deriving focal mechanisms via moment tensor inversion. The methods are based on the application of 3D elastic wavefield modeling, which is used to generate waveforms and extract wavefield attributes, for comparison to the observed field data. Events are located and focal mechanisms are derived via a multiparameter inversion, which minimizes the differences between synthetic and observed data. The results have been applied to the induced seismicity observed within the giant Groningen gas field, onshore Netherlands, where recorded earthquakes are triggered by stress changes, induced in the reservoir through pressure depletion. Locating events below the field is compounded by the presence of strong guided waves, which are trapped in the lower velocity reservoir interval. This complex multivalued wavefield is problematic for traditional event location methods, which assume a single traveltime arrival. We overcome this limitation by using all event arrivals in a wave-based solution to improve the accuracy of locating earthquakes and overcome the ambiguity of solving for location and the focal mechanism simultaneously. The event location methods have been applied to shallow and deep monitoring networks, and 150 events have been located with high accuracy. The interpretation of the earthquake activity indicates that the events studied originate from the movement of larger graben bounding faults, which are oriented in a north-northwest–south-southeast direction.

Induced seismicity from gas production has been identified as a significant problem within the Groningen Field, located in the northeast corner of the Netherlands. A key concern is the location, source mechanism, and magnitude of the microearthquake events, which are triggered by stress changes induced in the reservoir through pressure depletion. The resulting seismic energy release has been linked to building damage and social unrest in the area. The situation is compounded by the structural complexity of the subsurface with many hundreds of faults that crisscross the area, making earthquake location estimation challenging. An accurate methodology to determine both location and seismic mechanism is required. We present the results of an integrated full-waveform, 3D elastic, event location, and moment-tensor inversion workflow that has been applied to the regional, shallow borehole-monitoring array. This workflow utilizes all event arrivals to improve the accuracy of locating earthquakes and offers a reliable estimate of the earth's sense of motion during an earthquake. It is also demonstrated that the biggest source of error in locating earthquakes at Groningen lies in the vertical depth accuracy, which is correlated to the azimuthal angular coverage, and the fact that small earthquakes are only detected by a relatively small number of stations.

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S U M M A R YWe present a new method using high-frequency full waveform information to determine the focal mechanisms of small, local earthquakes monitored by a sparse surface network. During the waveform inversion, we maximize both the phase and amplitude matching between the observed and modelled waveforms. In addition, we use the polarities of the first P-wave arrivals and the average S/P amplitude ratios to better constrain the matching. An objective function is constructed to include all four criteria. An optimized grid search method is used to search over all possible ranges of source parameters (strike, dip and rake). To speed up the algorithm, a library of Green's functions is pre-calculated for each of the moment tensor components and possible earthquake locations. Optimizations in filtering and cross correlation are performed to further speed the grid search algorithm. The new method is tested on a five-station surface network used for monitoring induced seismicity at a petroleum field. The synthetic test showed that our method is robust and efficient to determine the focal mechanism when using only the vertical component of seismograms in the frequency range of 3-9 Hz. The application to dozens of induced seismic events showed satisfactory waveform matching between modelled and observed seismograms. The majority of the events have a strike direction parallel with the major NE-SW faults in the region. The normal faulting mechanism is dominant, which suggests the vertical stress is larger than the horizontal stress.

We develop a new method to locate microseismic events induced by hydraulic fracturing with simultaneous anisotropic tomography, using differential arrival times and differential backazimuths. Compared to the existing double-difference method, our method incorporates backazimuth information to better constrain microseismic locations in the case of downhole linear seismic arrays used for monitoring induced seismicity. The tomography is constrained to a 1-D layered VTI (transversely isotropic structure with a vertical symmetry axis) structure to improve inversion stability given the limited passive seismic data. We derive analytical sensitivities for the elastic moduli (C ij) and layer thickness L, and verify the analytical results with numerical calculations. The forward modelled traveltimes and sensitivities are all calculated analytically without weak anisotropy assumption. By incorporating the relative information among events, the extended double-difference method can provide better relative locations for events and, therefore, can characterize the fractures with higher accuracy. In the two tests with synthetic data, our method provides more accurate relative locations than the traditional methods, which only use absolute information. With fast speed and high accuracy, our inversion scheme is suitable for real-time microseismic monitoring of hydraulic fracturing.

To improve the accuracy of microseismic event locations, we developed a new inversion method with double-difference constraints for determining the hypocenters and the anisotropic velocity model for unconventional reservoirs. We applied this method to a microseismic data set monitoring a Middle Bakken completion in the Beaver Lodge area of North Dakota. Geophone arrays in four observation wells improved the ray coverage for the velocity inversion. Using an accurate anisotropic velocity model is important to correctly assess the height growth of the hydraulically induced fractures in the Middle Bakken. Our results showed that (1) moderate-to-strong anisotropy exists in all studied sedimentary layers, especially in the Upper and Lower Bakken shale formations, where the Thomsen parameters (ϵ and γ) can be greater than 0.4, (2) all the events selected for high signal-to-noise ratio and used for the joint velocity inversion are located in the Bakken and overlying Lodgepole formations, i.e., no events are detected in the Three Forks formation below the Bakken, and (3) more than half of the strong events are in two clusters at approximately 100 and 150 m above the Middle Bakken. Reoccurrence of strong, closely clustered events suggested activation of natural fractures or faults in the Lodgepole formation. The sensitivity analysis for the inversion results showed that the relative uncertainty in parameter δ is larger than other anisotropy parameters. The microseismic event locations and the anisotropic velocity model are validated by comparing synthetic and observed seismic waveforms and by S-wave splitting.

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[1] The south polar layered deposits (SPLD) constitute the largest known reservoir of water on Mars. Previous studies solved for the best fit uniform density of the deposits using a forward approach. Here we invert for the lateral density variations in the layered deposit using gravity data from radio tracking of Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, topography from MOLA on board Mars Global Surveyor, and radar sounding data from MARSIS on board Mars Express. We use the gravity anomalies outside the SPLD to construct a Wiener filter, which is applied to the gravitational signature of the SPLD to remove the short-wavelength anomalies over the SPLD that are spectrally consistent with an origin in the crust or mantle. We then use a constrained inversion for the vertically averaged density within the SPLD as a function of position. The results suggest significant density variations within the SPLD. An inverse relationship between the density and thickness of the SPLD suggests that thicker portions of the cap contain less dust. Alternatively, the Dorsa Argentea Formation may extend beneath the SPLD and result in the observed high gravity anomaly in the marginal area of the SPLD. We find these conclusions to be robust against the choice of inversion constraint and perturbations to the applied filter. A synthetic test is also performed to verify the recoverability of the density variation in our approach.