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At least 163 records · Page 9

Determining fast-S and slow-S propagation directions with SV-P data produced by buried explosives and recorded with vertical geophones

We have evaluated the concept of practicing S-wave reflection seismology with legacy 3D seismic data generated by a P-wave source and recorded with only vertical geophones. This type of S-wave imaging is based on the principle that seismic P-wave sources not only produce a downgoing illuminating P wavefield, but they also simultaneously produce a downgoing illuminating SV wavefield that, in almost all cases, is suitable for S-wave reflection imaging. The S-mode used in this study is the SV-P, or converted-P, mode. This mode involves a downgoing illuminating SV wavefield and an upgoing reflected P-mode that is recorded by vertical geophones. In flat-layered stratigraphy, the lengths of the SV and P raypaths in SV-P imaging are identical to the lengths of the SV and P raypaths in P-SV imaging with P-sources and 3C geophones. P-SV imaging of deep rocks has been practiced for more than two decades; SV-P imaging is a new concept. SV-P data should provide the same options for investigating deep rocks as do P-SV data. We have determined one of the equivalences between SV-P data extracted from vertical-geophone data and P-SV data extracted from horizontal geophones: that both modes react to azimuth-dependent variations in the S velocity in anisotropic rocks. Azimuthal variations in the SV-P traveltime can be used to define the polarization direction of the fast-S-wave mode, which is also the azimuth of the maximum horizontal stress (SHmax). Our investigation demonstrates a noninvasive method for monitoring changes in the SHmax azimuth across a CO 2 storage reservoir, or any targeted porous rock, as fluids are cycled into, and then out of, that rock’s pore space.

Geochemistry & Geophysics↗

Time-Lapse Vertical Seismic Profiling (VSP) for CO 2 Storage in a Depleted Oil Field in Northern Michigan

The Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) was founded in 2003 as part of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership initiative. Since its founding, MRCSP has made significant strides toward making CCUS a viable option for states in the region. The public/private consortium, funded through the DOE Regional Carbon Sequestration Initiative, brings together nearly 40 industry partners and 10 states. Battelle, as the project lead, oversees research, development and operations and coordinates activities among the partners. The incremental, phased approach has built a valuable knowledge base for the industry and paved the way for commercial-scale adoption of CCUS technologies. From 2008 to 2020, MRCSP Phase III focused on the development of large-scale injection projects. This report is part of a series of reports prepared under the Midwestern Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (MRCSP) Phase III (Development Phase). These reports summarize and detail the findings of the work conducted under the Phase III project. This report describes the Dover 33 VSP study to test the effectiveness of time-lapse Vertical Seismic Profile (VSP) for detecting and delineating a plume of more than 271,000 tonnes of CO2 injected into the Brown Niagaran and A-1 Carbonate formations within the Dover 33 reef between March 2013 and September 2016. Five 2D walkaway VSP (WVSP) source lines were acquired by SIGMA3 in September 2016 to investigate the possible time-lapse response in both P-wave and PS-wave seismic data. The data was compared to the same survey geometry acquired in March 2013 by SR2020. The seismic energy was recorded into an 80-level, three-component geophone array deployed into the Dover 1-33 well and placed just above the reef. P-wave and PS-wave reflection images were produced for each of the three source lines from both the 2013 baseline and 2016 monitor surveys. The images were then compared to look for changes in the reflectivity at and around the injection location that might indicate how the CO 2 has moved over this time period. This technique revealed several localized areas with sizable impedance differences inside the reef where CO 2 would be expected; however, a large number of similar impedance “hotspots” were also detected outside the reef in areas where injected CO 2 would not be expected. Therefore, a second analysis that involved calculating P-wave and S-wave travel time differences between the 2013 and 2016 VSPs was conducted to look for a change that could be caused by the CO 2 plume.

01 COAL, LIGNITE, AND PEAT↗

Building an EPA Class VI Permit Application

Summary To accelerate the commercialization of carbon capture and storage (CCS), the US Department of Energy (US DOE) is building on decades of characterization efforts and pilot-scale projects through their CarbonSAFE program. Administered through their National Energy Technology Laboratory, this program seeks to bring fully integrated projects to the sector that can store more than 50 million tonnes of CO2 over a 30-year period. The program, which was enacted before the enhancement of Internal Revenue Code Section 45Q, is in the capture assessment, characterization, and permitting phase. The objectives of this paper are to discuss (a) the injection permitting requirements of the CarbonSAFE projects; (b) information gathering in support of the permit; (c) the timelines of field development and permit-related activities; (d) the major technical components of the field development plan; and (e) early feedback from the regulators toward acceptance of the permit. In Mississippi, more than 30,000 acres have been characterized by six deep characterization wells, a deep groundwater well, and 92 line miles of 2D seismic as part of the CarbonSAFE Project ECO2S. During the acquisition of seismic data, all receiver lines were live, which resulted in the generation of a pseudo-3D seismic design. The incorporation of a 3D seismic survey was not included as part of this project due to logistical difficulties presented by the undulating, wooded surface terrain. A suite of openhole geophysical logs was taken from each well, allowing for a detailed interpretation of prospective storage reservoirs and confining intervals to complement the analysis carried out on the 290 ft of a whole core that was cut through the prospective confining zone and storage reservoir. The detailed geologic and reservoir data were assembled and entered into a 3D model to assess the injection capacity and the area of review (AoR). This information fed into the detailed corrective action, monitoring, testing, and postinjection site care (PISC) modeling. The results have been exceptional. The geologic assessment has revealed three primary storage targets, ranging in depth from 3,500 ft to 6,000 ft. These storage reservoirs net 1,300 ft of sandstone, with mean porosity and permeability of 29% and 3.6 darcies, respectively. Together, these reservoirs have storage capacities that may exceed 20 million tonnes per square mile, making this a gigatonne prospect. Forward modeling of the project resulted in an AoR of 16 sq miles, injecting about 8000 t/d, for 30 years, via two deep injection wells. The excellent confining characteristics of the caprock, relatively simple geologic structure, and lack of historical well drilling activity in this area provide excellent containment of the injected CO2. Based on this work, the project has proposed 20 years of PISC. To date, only two US CO2 injection permits have been granted. These projects relied on a singular capture point feeding a singular sequestration point (source to sink), and considerations have not been made to garner CO2 emissions from other industrial sources. The Kemper County Storage Complex is a first-of-its-kind storage hub concept that looks to develop an area capable of storing significant quantities of CO2 from the region. Also, this work will show how characterization efforts, geological and numerical modeling efforts, and plan development were constructed in support of permit and incentives acceptance.

Energy & Fuels↗

The Role of Premagmatic Rifting in Shaping a Volcanic Continental Margin: An Example From the Eastern North American Margin

Both magmatic and tectonic processes contribute to the formation of volcanic continental margins. Such margins are thought to undergo extension across a narrow zone of lithospheric thinning (~100 km). New observations based on existing and reprocessed data from the Eastern North American Margin contradict this hypothesis. With ~64,000 km of 2-D seismic data tied to 40 wells combined with published refraction, deep reflection, receiver function, and onshore drilling efforts, we quantified along-strike variations in the distribution of rift structures, magmatism, crustal thickness, and early post-rift sedimentation under the shelf of Baltimore Canyon Trough (BCT), Long Island Platform, and Georges Bank Basin (GBB). Results indicate that BCT is narrow (80–120 km) with a sharp basement hinge and few rift basins. The seaward dipping reflectors (SDR) there extend ~50 km seaward of the hinge line. In contrast, the GBB is wide (~200 km), has many syn-rift structures, and the SDR there extend ~200 km seaward of the hinge line. Early post-rift depocenters at the GBB coincide with thinner crust suggesting “uniform” thinning of the entire lithosphere. Models for the formation of volcanic margins do not explain the wide structure of the GBB. We argue that crustal thinning of the BCT was closely associated with late syn-rift magmatism, whereas the broad thinning of the GBB segment predated magmatism. Correlation of these variations to crustal terranes of different compositions suggests that the inherited rheology determined the premagmatic response of the lithosphere to extension.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

PySolate : A Python‐Based Thresholding Tool to Denoise or Designal Seismic Waveforms Based on the Continuous Wavelet Transform

PySolate is a Python‐based toolset that implements the continuous wavelet transform and nonlinear thresholding operations to denoise or designal seismic data, following Langston and Mousavi (2019). This filtering approach can remove microseismic noise to isolate intermediate‐period seismic signals that are key to enabling full‐waveform modeling and analysis of smaller‐magnitude regional events. This approach is best for the application to signals with frequency or time separation of signal and noise, in contrast to Fourier analysis, which is effective when signal and noise are separated in frequency. We demonstrate the Python toolset using the six announced Democratic People’s Republic of Korea declared nuclear tests, showing the effectiveness of isolating the seismic signal compared to standard bandpass filtering. In conclusion, we also demonstrate the ease of using the toolset with any Python processing tools.

Asia↗

Machine Learning Inference of Random Medium Properties

Earth materials are heterogeneous across a range of spatial scales, but the resolvability of small structures is limited by sparse data coverage, noise, bandlimitedness, and other difficulties. In practice, heterogeneities below a certain size cannot be recovered from seismic data except through statistical medium descriptions, which even then can be difficult to uniquely determine. To improve the characterization of such heterogeneities, we develop a novel supervised machine learning (ML) model that provides insight about the recoverability of statistical medium properties from elastic waveform data and succeeds despite cycle-skipping and other challenges well known from elastic waveform inversion. We demonstrate the approach using random media generated by superimposing self-affine random variations on homogeneous and layered background structures. After training on sparsely-recorded, high-frequency waveforms from hundreds of different random medium realizations, we show the ability of our ML model to recover correlation lengths and other statistical properties of interest to near-surface and crustal seismology, among other fields. For frequency passbands and spatial offsets encountered in seismology, Gaussian correlation lengths and the amplitude of the random variations relative to the background model are recovered even in challenging scenarios involving unknown medium parameters, complex crustal structures, and low signal-to-noise ratio. In comparison, von Kármán correlation lengths, which are related to larger-wavelength variations of the medium than Gaussian correlation lengths, are not as well recovered. These results provide one of the first and most systematic investigations of the recoverability of statistical properties of heterogeneities below the resolution limit of deterministic seismic tomography, and suggest practical ML strategies for high-frequency waveform seismology.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Locating Seismic Events with Local-Distance Data

As the seismic monitoring community advances toward detecting, identifying, and locating ever-smaller natural and anthropogenic events, the need is constantly increasing for higher resolution, higher fidelity data, models, and methods for accurately characterizing events. Local-distance seismic data provide robust constraints on event locations, but also introduce complexity due to the significant geologic heterogeneity of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle, and the relative sparsity of data that often occurs with small events recorded on regional seismic networks. Identifying the critical characteristics for improving local-scale event locations and the factors that impact location accuracy and reliability is an ongoing challenge for the seismic community. Using Utah as a test case, we examine three data sets of varying duration, finesse, and magnitude to investigate the effects of local earth structure and modeling parameters on local-distance event location precision and accuracy. We observe that the most critical elements controlling relocation precision are azimuthal coverage and local-scale velocity structure, with tradeoffs based on event depth, type, location, and range.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Big Data Seismology

The discipline of seismology is based on observations of ground motion that are inherently undersampled in space and time. Our basic understanding of earthquake processes and our ability to resolve 4D Earth structure are fundamentally limited by data volume. Currently, Big Data Seismology is an emergent revolution involving the use of large, data-dense inquiries that is providing new opportunities to make fundamental advances in these areas. This article reviews recent scientific advances enabled by Big Data Seismology through the context of three major drivers: the development of new data-dense sensor systems, improvements in computing, and the development of new types of techniques and algorithms. Each driver is explored in the context of both global and exploration seismology, alongside collaborative opportunities that combine the features of long-duration data collections (common to global seismology) with dense networks of sensors (common to exploration seismology). The review explores some of the unique challenges and opportunities that Big Data Seismology presents, drawing on parallels from other fields facing similar issues. Finally, recent scientific findings enabled by dense seismic data sets are discussed, and we assess the opportunities for significant advances made possible with Big Data Seismology. This review is designed to be a primer for seismologists who are interested in getting up-to-speed with how the Big Data revolution is advancing the field of seismology.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Applying Machine Learning and Bayesian Inference to Identify and Locate Moving Anthropogenic Sources Using Distributed Acoustic Sensing Data

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) systems, which use existing telecommunication fibers, offer high‐resolution capabilities ideal for recording anthropogenic sources. However, the complexity of urban environments and the large amount of data recorded by DAS require automated methods to efficiently detect and categorize anthropogenic sources. Here, we evaluate how well three machine learning models (k‐nearest neighbor [k‐NN], convolutional neural networks, and recurrent‐convolutional neural networks) can identify various anthropogenic sources recorded by DAS. Our findings reveal that both k‐NN and neural network methods perform well in high signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) settings. However, their accuracy decreases at SNRs <4. We also use Kalman filtering, a form of Bayesian inference, on backprojected locations of these sources to recover locations that generally fall within standard smartphone Global Positioning System errors. By combining machine learning and Kalman filter results, we calculate a multidimensional model of moving anthropogenic sources. These results demonstrate the potential of DAS data in urban seismology for accurately identifying and locating such sources. Depending on the research objectives, these sources can be further studied or filtered out to improve the quality of seismic data for earthquake studies. Such methods provide a valuable tool for urban seismology and seismic hazard analysis.

Luckie, Thomas William [Sandia National Laboratori↗

Automatic Calibration of a Geomechanical Model from Sparse Data for Estimating Stress in Deep Geological Formations

Summary In this study, we demonstrate geomechanical modeling with fully automatic parameter calibration to estimate the full geomechanical stress fields of a prospective US carbon dioxide (CO2) storage site, based on sparse measurement data. The goal is to compute full stress tensor field estimates (principal stresses and orientations) that are maximally compatible with observations within the constraints of the model assumptions, thereby extending pointwise, incomplete partial stress measurement to a simulated full formation stress field, as well as a rough assessment of the associated error. We use the Perch site, located in Otsego County, Michigan, USA, as our case study. The input data consist of partial stress tensor information inferred from in-situ borehole tests, geophysical well logs, and processing of seismic data. A static earth model (SEM) of the site was developed, and geomechanical simulation functionality of the open-source MATLAB Reservoir Simulation Toolbox (MRST) was used to model the stress field. Adjoint-based nonlinear optimization was used to adjust boundary conditions and material properties to calibrate simulated results of observations. Results were interpreted through a Bayesian framework. The focus of this paper is to demonstrate how the fully automatic calibration procedure works and discuss the results obtained; it does not attempt a detailed analysis of the stress field in the context of the proposed CO2 storage initiatives. Our work is part of a larger effort to noninvasively determine in-situ stresses in deep formations considered for CO2 storage. Guided by previously published research on geomechanical model calibration, our work presents a novel calibration approach supporting a potentially large number of linear or nonlinear calibration parameters to produce results optimally agreeing with available measurements and thus extend partial pointwise estimates to full tensor fields compatible with the physics of the site.

Engineering↗

Refining Principal Stress Measurements in Reservoir Underburden in Regions of Induced Seismicity through Seismological Tools, Laboratory Experiments - Final Technical Report

This project developed methodologies to measure the in-situ principal stress in the deep subsurface through use of multiple independent, but complementary, seismic methods, laboratory verification, and development of theoretical frameworks. By leveraging existing regional and local datasets we developed, tested, and refined a set of diagnostic tools for determining the in-situ stress state with reduced uncertainty at and below reservoir depths (1.5-6 km). A set of novel tools was produced that are scale independent, such that their utility is equivalent on regional, field scale, and near borehole monitoring of principal stresses in reservoir underburden for carbon storage projects. During a 4-year Department of Energy (DOE) and Southern Company funded project, carried out by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the University of Oklahoma (OU), and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the project team developed methodologies to measure the far-field in-situ principal stress in the deep subsurface, leveraging induced seismicity data from waste-water disposal projects. These methodologies consisted in the use of well-established and technically advanced seismic processing methods, such as virtual seismometer method-moment tensor (VSM-MT) and shear wave splitting (SWS), that are adept at recovering the stress orientation and certain components of the stress tensor. These methods were applied to robust seismicity catalogs created with matched filter techniques near sites of active fluid disposal—a proxy for carbon storage sites where such datasets are more limited. Estimates of the stress orientation made with seismic processing tools were considered along with laboratory acoustic emission experiments conducted on rock samples from the region of interest. Stress orientations in the studied region do not vary significantly across distances of ~100 km, nor are they found to rotate through time as a consequence of local wastewater disposal, as previously speculated. Finally, the project team investigated the trade-offs among the different seismic methods and evaluated the range of uncertainty that is generated with these methodologies, which led to a practical use and refinement of the VSM-MT technique when it is applied to field datasets. Understanding the trade-offs between these different methods highlighted the potential benefits of improved quantification of uncertainties on stress field estimations.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

Evaluation of Seismic Artificial Intelligence with Uncertainty

Artificial intelligence has transformed the seismic community with deep learning models (DLMs) that are trained to complete specific tasks within workflows. However, there is still a lack of robust evaluation frameworks for evaluating and comparing DLMs. Here, we address this gap by designing an evaluation framework that jointly incorporates two crucial aspects: performance uncertainty and learning efficiency. To target these aspects, we meticulously construct the training, validation, and test splits using a clustering method tailored to seismic data and enact an expansive training design to segregate performance uncertainty arising from stochastic training processes and random data sampling. The framework’s ability to guard against misleading declarations of model superiority is demonstrated through the evaluation of PhaseNet (Zhu and Beroza, 2018), a popular seismic phase picking DLM, under three training approaches. Our framework helps practitioners choose the best model for their problem and set performance expectations by explicitly analyzing model performance with uncertainty at varying budgets of training data.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

The Imperial Valley Dark Fiber Project: Toward Seismic Studies Using DAS and Telecom Infrastructure for Geothermal Applications

We report that the Imperial Valley is a seismically active basin occupying the southern end of the Salton trough, an area of rapid extension, high heat flow, and abundant geothermal resources. This report describes an ongoing large-scale distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) recording study acquiring high-density seismic data on an array between Calipatria and Imperial, California. This 27 km array, operating on dark fiber since 9 November 2020, has recorded a wealth of local seismic events as well as ambient noise. The goal of the broader Imperial Valley Dark Fiber project is to evaluate passive DAS as a tool for geothermal exploration and monitoring. This report is intended to provide installation information, noise characteristics, and metadata for future studies utilizing the data set. Because of the relatively small number of basin-scale DAS studies that have been conducted to date, we also provide a range of lessons learned during the deployment to assist future researchers exploring this acquisition strategy.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

Evolution of storage monitoring – update in response to commercial and regulatory drivers

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is in transition from first-of-a kind projects and research-orientated pilots to commercially-motivated applications. Monitoring results from many newly developed and planned large scale commercial projects are limited; however, it is worthwhile to assess their evolution and consider new strategies as part of an effort to assess and document best practices. Commercial monitoring is targeted to activities that comply with regulatory drivers and de-risk investments. Commercial monitoring also supports accounting that storage has occurred and is tied to project financing. It deals with long time frames and large volumes injected into multiple wells and multiple projects in favorable areas. We see developing trends toward reproducible workflows that systematically reduce risks and clarify expectations for oversight and long-term surveillance. Monitoring techniques showing increasing trends include injection zone pressure as a history-matching and compliance tool. To reduce cost and environmental impact of time-lapse seismic data collection, deploying new approaches and tools, such as use of fibre and installed sources are increasingly applied. Concern over the risk of induced seismicity by regulatory bodies and the general public has increased, which has also resulted in increased monitoring. Some techniques used in the early research phases have been sidelined or used only in restricted applications. For example, geochemical analyses in the injection zone as well as the environment are now being deployed less than it was in research-oriented programs, except in the US where it is required by the permitting process. Expectations of frequent area-wide near surface monitoring have also decreased.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗

3D Geologic Framework Modelling of the Los Alamos National Laboratory Site and Pajarito Plateau: Integrating a realistic 3D fault network and modelling subsurface relationships in a sparsely sampled and complex geologic region

The subsurface geology beneath the Pajarito Plateau is critical to understanding the seismic hazard of the Pajarito Fault System, yet our understanding of this geology is relatively poor. While previous 3D geologic framework models of the area have been created for the purposes of understanding hydrogeologic flow, they are inadequate for the purposes of understanding the Pajarito Fault System. The specific challenges of using oil and gas software for this purpose include: (1) the geologic complexities resulting from volcanism and tectonism; (2) a need for a high level of stratigraphic detail over a large area; (3) a near complete lack of seismic data; and (4) sparse wellbore data. Presented here is a workflow that handles these challenges of adapting commercially available software used by the oil and gas industries to this seismic hazard problem.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

On the Feasibility of Geophysical Methods for CO 2 Monitoring in the North Dakota CarbonSAFE Project

Conference presentation at American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ, November 13–18, 2022. An analysis of rock physics crossplots and diagnostic models suggests that the baseline seismic data may be sensitive to changes in lithology and porosity of the Broom Creek Formation and that these changes may be detectable by prestack seismic inversion.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗

STILGAR: Subsurface Models for Graymont Pleasant Gap Mine

The detection, location, and monitoring of underground structures are of great importance to national and global security. Tunnels and voids generate seismic signatures detectable at the surface, but using non-invasive seismic data to image near-surface presents several challenges in real-world applications. In this report, we describe the use of a dense surface seismic deployment to generate subsurface models of the Graymont Pleasant Gap mine - a single-layer mine with a complex structure embedded in a high-velocity P-wave limestone bedrock. Our approach consists of three key methods. We use P-wave arrival times from local blast events to perform a tomography inversion with the tomoTD method, constructing a P-wave velocity model of the subsurface. We model the layer above the mine using Rayleigh wave ellipticity and inversion techniques. We leverage ongoing anthropogenic activities to identify and locate noise sources both on the surface and within the subsurface. With this integrated approach we aim to overcome the challenges and enhance our ability to non-invasively characterize underground structures, contributing to improved seismic monitoring techniques.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗

The Strange Case of Ground-Coupled Airwaves on Seismoacoustic Stations at Local to Near-Regional Scales

Here we investigate the application of ground-coupled airwaves observed by seismoacoustic stations at local to near-regional scales to detect signals of interest and determine back-azimuth information. Ground-coupled airwaves are created from incident pressure waves traveling through the atmosphere that couple to the earth and transmit as a seismic wave with retrograde elliptical motion. Previous studies at sub-local scales (<10 km from a source of interest) found the back-azimuth to the source could be accurately determined from seismoacoustic signals recorded by acoustic and 3-component seismic sensors spatially separated on the order of 10 to 150 m. The potential back-azimuth directions are estimated from the coherent signals between the acoustic and vertical seismic data, via a propagation-induced phase shift of the seismoacoustic signal. A unique solution is then informed by the particle motion of the 3-component seismic station, which was previously found to be less accurate than the seismoacoustic-sensor method. We investigate the applicability of this technique to greater source-receiver distances, from 50-100 km and up to 400 km, which contains pressure waves with tropospheric and stratospheric ray paths, respectively. Specifically, we analyze seismoacoustic sources with ground truth from rocket motor fuel elimination events at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) as well as a 2020 rocket launch in Southern California. From these sources we observe evidence that while coherent signals can be seen from both sources on multiple seismoacoustic station pairs, the determined ground-coupled airwave back-azimuths are more complicated than results at more local scales. Our findings suggest more complex factors including incidence angle, coupling location, subsurface material, and atmospheric propagation effects need to be fully investigated before the ground-coupled airwave back-azimuth determination method can be applied or assessed at these further distances.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗