Abstract Fault zone structures at many scales largely dictate earthquake ruptures and are controlled by the geologic setting and slip history. Characterizations of these structures at diverse scales inform better understandings of earthquake hazards and earthquake phenomenology. However, characterizing fault zones at sub‐kilometer scales has historically been challenging, and these challenges are exacerbated in urban areas, where locating and characterizing faults is critical for hazard assessment. We present a new procedure for characterizing fault zones at sub‐kilometer scales using distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). This technique involves the backprojection of the DAS‐measured scattered wavefield generated by natural earthquakes. This framework provides a measure of the strength of scattering along a DAS array and thus constrains the positions and properties of local scatterers. The high spatial sampling of DAS arrays makes possible the resolution of these scatterers at the scale of tens of meters over distances of kilometers. We test this methodology using a DAS array in Ridgecrest, CA which recorded much of the 2019 Mw7.1 Ridgecrest earthquake aftershock sequence. We show that peaks in scattering along the DAS array are spatially correlated with mapped faults in the region and that the strength of scattering is frequency‐dependent. We present a model of these scatterers as shallow, low‐velocity zones that is consistent with how we may expect faults to perturb the local velocity structure. We show that the fault zone geometry can be constrained by comparing our observations with synthetic tests.
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A unified wavefield-partitioning approach for distributed acoustic sensing
SUMMARY While distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) has been demonstrated to have great potential in seismology, DAS data often have much higher levels of stochastic and coherent noise (e.g. instrument noise, traffic vibrations) than data collected by traditional seismometers. The linearly, densely spaced nature of DAS arrays presents a suite of opportunities for more innovative processing techniques that can be used to address this issue. One way to take advantage of DAS’s array architecture is through the use of curvelets. Curvelets have a non-uniform scaling property that makes them an excellent tool for representing images with discontinuities along piecewise, twice continuously differentiable curves. This anisotropic scaling property makes curvelets an ideal processing tool for DAS data, for which the measured wavefield can be represented as an image composed of curved features. Here, we use the curvelet frame as a tool for the manipulation of DAS signal and demonstrate how this manipulation can improve our ability to identify important features in DAS data sets. We use the curvelet representation to partition the measured wavefield using DAS data collected near Ridgecrest, CA, following the 2019 Mw7.1 Ridgecrest earthquake. Here, we isolate the earthquake-induced wavefield from coherent and stochastic noise using the curvelet frame in an effort to improve the results of template matching of the Ridgecrest aftershock sequence. We show that our wavefield-partitioning technique facilitates the identification of over 30 per cent more aftershocks and greatly reduces the magnitude of diurnal depressions in the aftershock catalogue due to cultural noise.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1822214
- PAR ID:
- 10326642
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Geophysical Journal International
- Volume:
- 228
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0956-540X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1410 to 1418
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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