Changes of Hydraulic Transmissivity Orientation Induced by Tele‐Seismic Waves

Abstract

Fracture orientation and permeability play an important role in the transport of fluids (water, oil, and gas) and heat in the crust, especially in crystalline basement and fine-grained sedimentary rocks where matrix permeability is low (Faulkner et al., 2010;Hubbert & Rubey, 1959;Saffer, 2015;Townend & Zoback, 2000). Permeability is not a static quantity, however, and has been documented to change after earthquakes (e.g., Elkhoury et al., 2006;Manga et al., 2012). The responses of fractures to seismic waves arriving from a given azimuth depend on the fracture orientation (Crampin, 1984;Hudson, 1981), thus the permeability change induced by earthquakes might also be sensitive to fracture properties.The orientation of hydraulically conductive fractures can be measured using monitoring wells that record water level changes produced by solid Earth tides (Hanson & Owen, 1982). Pressure changes in conductive fractures depend on fracture orientation relative to the evolving principle directions of the tidal strain so that the phase and amplitude of the water level changes document apparent fracture orientations.In the present study, based on the responses of water level to diurnal (O 1 ) and semidiurnal (M 2 ) tides, we use the signs of phase shifts and magnitudes of amplitude ratios of the M 2 and O 1 tides to study changes in aquifers connected to five wells located on the North China platform. After two large regional earthquakes, a subset of these wells showed changes in the phase shift between tidal strain and water level responses. Those changes after earthquakes were previously attributed to changes in the confinement of aquifers (Zhang et al., 2021) using a model for vertical leakage through confining aquitards (Wang et al., 2018). Zhang et al. (2021) drew the

Long‐ and Short‐Term Effects of Seismic Waves and Coseismic Pressure Changes on Fractured Aquifers

“…We study these wells because they have a long record of continuous measurements sampled with high-enough frequency to enable tidal analysis, and a location far enough from the coast that ocean tides can be neglected and the tidal analysis can use theoretically computed solid-Earth tides. Further, several previous studies have analyzed their responses to earthquakes (Zhang et al, 2016(Zhang et al, , 2022) so we can compare and contrast our findings. LN-3A digital water-level instruments are used to document waterlevel changes.…”

“…The known quantities in those equations are the amplitudes and phases of the M 2 and O 1 constituents in the solid Earth strain tides calculated using routines from the Mapsis package (Lu et al, 2002) for the location of each well, and it was assumed that ν = 0.25 (Barbour et al, 2019). Therefore, to obtain the fracture orientation (dip and strike, deduced from; α 1 , α 2 , α 3 ), we solve the set of N equations as a nonlinear least-squares problem and using the amplitudes and phases of body strain tides at those wells (Zhang et al, 2022).…”

Using the Tidal Response of Groundwater to Assess and Monitor Caprock Confinement in CO2 Geological Sequestration

“…The low frequency and long wavelength of natural earthquake waves make it impossible to detect shallow fractures and faults in the crust. Developing new methods for detecting shallow features has been a pressing concern [92].…”

Liquid Cohesion Induced Particle Agglomeration Enhances Clogging in Rock Fractures

“…Simultaneous transport of fluids and solid particles through rock fractures is ubiquitous in the Earth's crust with relevance in many geophysical phenomena and subsurface engineering and environmental applications, including dynamic stress (e.g., due to seismic waves) induced fracture unclogging (Candela et al., 2015; Barbosa et al., 2019; Y. Zhang, Manga, et al., 2022), hydraulic fracturing (Baldini et al., 2018; Jalali et al., 2018; Parisio & Yoshioka, 2020; Salimzadeh et al., 2020; Tong & Mohanty, 2016), borehole drilling (Elkatatny et al., 2020; She et al., 2020; M. B. Wang, Guo, & Chen, 2020), particulate contamination (Flury & Aramrak, 2017; He et al., 2023; Wu et al., 2021), and enhanced oil recovery (Aben et al., 2017; Baldini et al., 2018; Jasinski & Dabrowski, 2018; Liang et al., 2016; Woodworth & Miskimins, 2007). Fluids and particles can mix to form suspensions, and the flow dynamic of suspension in rock fracture is complex.…”