Environmental seismology: What can we learn on earth surface processes with ambient noise?

Larose, Éric; Carrière, Simon; Voisin, Christophe; Bottelin, Pierre; Baillet, Laurent; Guéguen, Philippe; Walter, Fabian; Jongmans, Denis; Guillier, Bertrand; Garambois, Stéphane; Gimbert, Florent; Massey, Chris

doi:10.1016/j.jappgeo.2015.02.001

Cited by 160 publications

(133 citation statements)

References 82 publications

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“…Burtin et al, 2008;Gimbert et al, 2014). This emerging research field and the use of seismic noise crosscorrelation methods to investigate the states and changes of subsurface conditions are referred to as environmental seismology (Larose et al, 2015). Recent studies (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seismic monitoring of small alpine rockfalls – validity, precision and limitations

Dietze

Mohadjer²,

Turowski

et al. 2017

Earth Surf. Dynam.

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Abstract. Rockfall in deglaciated mountain valleys is perhaps the most important post-glacial geomorphic process for determining the rates and patterns of valley wall erosion. Furthermore, rockfall poses a significant hazard to inhabitants and motivates monitoring efforts in populated areas. Traditional rockfall detection methods, such as aerial photography and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) data evaluation, provide constraints on the location and released volume of rock but have limitations due to significant time lags or integration times between surveys, and deliver limited information on rockfall triggering mechanisms and the dynamics of individual events. Environmental seismology, the study of seismic signals emitted by processes at the Earth's surface, provides a complementary solution to these shortcomings. However, this approach is predominantly limited by the strength of the signals emitted by a source and their transformation and attenuation towards receivers. To test the ability of seismic methods to identify and locate small rockfalls, and to characterise their dynamics, we surveyed a 2.16 km 2 large, near-vertical cliff section of the Lauterbrunnen Valley in the Swiss Alps with a TLS device and six broadband seismometers. During 37 days in autumn 2014, 10 TLS-detected rockfalls with volumes ranging from 0.053 ± 0.004 to 2.338 ± 0.085 m 3 were independently detected and located by the seismic approach, with a deviation of 81 +59 −29 m (about 7 % of the average inter-station distance of the seismometer network). Further potential rockfalls were detected outside the TLS-surveyed cliff area. The onset of individual events can be determined within a few milliseconds, and their dynamics can be resolved into distinct phases, such as detachment, free fall, intermittent impact, fragmentation, arrival at the talus slope and subsequent slope activity. The small rockfall volumes in this area require significant supervision during data processing: 2175 initially picked potential events reduced to 511 potential events after applying automatic rejection criteria. The 511 events needed to be inspected manually to reveal 19 short earthquakes and 37 potential rockfalls, including the 10 TLS-detected events. Rockfall volume does not show a relationship with released seismic energy or peak amplitude at this spatial scale due to the dominance of other, process-inherent factors, such as fall height, degree of fragmentation, and subsequent talus slope activity. The combination of TLS and environmental seismology provides, despite the significant amount of manual data processing, a detailed validation of seismic detection of small volume rockfalls, and revealed unprecedented temporal, spatial and geometric details about rockfalls in steep mountainous terrain.Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences Union.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seismic monitoring of small alpine rockfalls – validity, precision and limitations

Dietze

Mohadjer²,

Turowski

et al. 2017

Earth Surf. Dynam.

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“…Bedrock and sediment cover are not static parts of the system, they change by, for example different ground 20 water levels, freeze-thaw transitions, propagation and closure of cracks and reversible/irreversible compaction. Coda wave interferometry or seismic noise cross-correlation (e.g., Sens-Schönfelder and Larose, 2010;Larose et al, 2015) is a powerful method to tackle this field. Thus, integrating the basic calculations to the 'eseis' package is a relevant future task.…”

Section: Anticipated Future Functionalitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The R package eseis – a comprehensive software toolbox for environmental seismology

Dietze

2018

Preprint

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Abstract. Environmental seismology is the study of the seismic signals emitted by Earth surface processes. This emerging research field is at the seams of seismology, geomorphology, hydrology, meteorology, and further Earth science disciplines.It amalgamates a wide variety of methods from across these disciplines and, ultimately, fuses them in a common analysis environment. This overarching scope of environmental seismology asks for a coherent, yet integrative software, which is accepted by many of the involved scientific disciplines. The statistic software R has gained paramount importance in the 5 majority of data science research fields. R has well justified advances over other, mostly commercial software, which makes it the ideal language to base a comprehensive analysis toolbox on. The article introduces the avenues and needs of environmental seismology, and how these are met by the R package 'eseis'. The conceptual structure, example data sets and available functions are demonstrated. Worked examples illustrate possible applications of the package and in depth descriptions of the flexible use of the functions. The package is available under the GPL license on the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) and 10 maintained on Github.

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“…Even longer lag times are to be expected for the swell-shrink effects of clay minerals. Most of the mentioned triggers change the material structure of the rock mass to fail and could in principle be investigated by using coda wave interferometry methods (see Larose et al, 2015, for a review of possible techniques). Wind interaction with bare rock surfaces results in pressure fluctuations and thus cyclic stress.…”

Section: Meteorological Triggersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Like the rain-related triggers, heat-related mechanisms also change the material structure significantly and may thus be investigated by using coda wave interferometry approaches (Larose et al, 2015). However, this promising scientific field with its application to Earth surface process research topics has just emerged recently and is still at an experimental stage.…”

Section: Heat-related Triggersmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, seismic signals allow for insight into the anatomy of geomorphic processes through interpretation of the recorded time series and spectral properties. During the last decade, there has been significant progress in theory (Gimbert et al, 2014;Larose et al, 2015), experiments (Vilajosana et al, 2008;Farin et al, 2015) and application across different scales (Dammeier et al, 2011;Lacroix and Helmstetter, 2011;Zimmer et al, 2012;Ekström and Stark, 2013;Burtin et al, 2016). However, rockfall activity has mainly received attention as a "by-product" of seismic observatories with different scopes (e.g., Dammeier et al, 2011;Hibert et al, 2011;Burtin et al, 2014) and research has focused on linking seismic properties with geometric and kinetic characteristics, such as mobilised volume, run-out length or fragmentation (Dammeier et al, 2011;Ekström and Stark, 2013;Hibert et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Spatiotemporal patterns, triggers and anatomies of seismically detected rockfalls

et al. 2017

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Abstract. Rockfalls are a ubiquitous geomorphic process and a natural hazard in steep landscapes across the globe. Seismic monitoring can provide precise information on the timing, location and event anatomy of rockfalls, which are parameters that are otherwise hard to constrain. By pairing data from 49 seismically detected rockfalls in the Lauterbrunnen Valley in the Swiss Alps with auxiliary meteorologic and seismic data of potential triggers during autumn 2014 and spring 2015, we are able to (i) analyse the evolution of single rockfalls and their common properties, (ii) identify spatial changes in activity hotspots (iii) and explore temporal activity patterns on different scales ranging from months to minutes to quantify relevant trigger mechanisms. Seismic data allow for the classification of rockfall activity into two distinct phenomenological types. The signals can be used to discern multiple rock mass releases from the same spot, identify rockfalls that trigger further rockfalls and resolve modes of subsequent talus slope activity. In contrast to findings based on discontinuous methods with integration times of several months, rockfall in the monitored limestone cliff is not spatially uniform but shows a systematic downward shift of a rock mass release zone following an exponential law, most likely driven by a continuously lowering water table. Freeze-thaw transitions, approximated at first order from air temperature time series, account for only 5 out of the 49 rockfalls, whereas 19 rockfalls were triggered by rainfall events with a peak lag time of 1 h. Another 17 rockfalls were triggered by diurnal temperature changes and occurred during the coldest hours of the day and during the highest temperature change rates. This study is thus the first to show direct links between proposed rockfall triggers and the spatiotemporal distribution of rockfalls under natural conditions; it extends existing models by providing seismic observations of the rockfall process prior to the first rock mass impacts.

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Environmental seismology: What can we learn on earth surface processes with ambient noise?

Cited by 160 publications

References 82 publications

Seismic monitoring of small alpine rockfalls – validity, precision and limitations

Seismic monitoring of small alpine rockfalls – validity, precision and limitations

The R package eseis – a comprehensive software toolbox for environmental seismology

Spatiotemporal patterns, triggers and anatomies of seismically detected rockfalls

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