Estimating P-and S-Wave Velocities in Fluid Mud Using Seismic Interferometry

Fluid mud plays an important role in navigability in ports and waterways. Characterizing and monitoring the seismic properties of the fluid mud can help understand its geotechnical behavior. Estimation of the wave velocities in fluid mud with high accuracy and repeatability enables investigating the behavior of parameters like the yield stress...

On the Potential of 3D Transdimensional Surface Wave Tomography for Geothermal Prospecting of the Reykjanes Peninsula

Seismic travel time tomography using surface waves is an effective tool for three-dimensional crustal imaging. Historically, these surface waves are the result of active seismic sources or earthquakes. More recently, however, surface waves retrieved through the application of seismic interferometry have also been exploited. Conventionally, two...

Monitoring changes inside subsurface layers using non-physical reflections retrieved from seismic interferometry

Seismic interferometry (SI) is a principle for retrieving responses between two receivers using cross-correlation. After the retrieval, one of the receivers acts as a virtual seismic source whose response is retrieved at the second receiver. Correct response retrieval relies on assumptions, among other, of a lossless medium being illuminated...

Imaging Torfajökull's Magmatic Plumbing System With Seismic Interferometry and Phase Velocity Surface Wave Tomography

Torfajökull volcano, Iceland, has not erupted since 1477. However, intense geothermal activity, deformation, and seismicity suggest a long‐lasting magmatic system. In this paper, we use ambient noise tomography to image the magmatic system beneath Torfajökull volcano. One hundred days of ambient noise data from 23 broadband seismometers show the...

Retrieval of Elastodynamic Reflections From Passive Double-Couple Recordings

Virtual Green's functions obtained by seismic interferometry (SI) can provide valuable reflectivity data that can complement tomographic inversion schemes. However, virtual reflections are affected by illumination irregularities that are typical of earthquake-induced wavefields recorded by the receiver array. As a consequence, irregular...

Imaging and characterization of heterogeneous landfills using geophysical methods

Nowadays many countries use landfilling for the management of their waste or for treating old landfills. Emissions from landfills can be harmful to the environment and to human health, making the stabilization of landfills a priority for the landfill communities. Estimation of the emission potential for determination of the aftercare period and...

Shear wave seismic interferometry for lithospheric imaging: Application to southern Mexico

Seismic interferometry allows for the creation of new seismic traces by cross correlating existing ones. With sufficient sampling of remote-source positions, it is possible to create a virtual source record by transforming a receiver location into a virtual source. The imaging technique developed here directly retrieves reflectivity information...

Estimating the location of a tunnel using correlation and inversion of Rayleigh wave scattering

The investigation of near-surface scatterers, such as cavities, tunnels, abandoned mine shafts, and buried objects, is important to mitigate geohazards and environmental hazards. By inversion of travel times of cross-correlated scattered waves, due to the incident Rayleigh waves, we estimate the location of a near-surface tunnel from seismic...

Downhole interferometric illumination diagnosis and balancing

With seismic interferometry or the virtual source method, controlled sources can be redatumed from the Earth’s surface to generate so-called virtual sources at downhole receiver locations. Generally this is done by crosscorrelation of the recorded down-hole data and stacking over source locations. By studying the retrieved data at zero time lag,...

Interferometric redatuming by multidimensional deconvolution

Seismic reflection imaging is a popular method to image, characterize and monitor the Earth's subsurface. In this method, seismic signals are sent into the subsurface and their reflections are collected. Strong heterogeneities in upper sections of the subsurface often pose a problem for imaging deeper sections. To overcome these problems, it has...

Body-wave seismic interferometry applied to earthquake- and storm-induced wavefield

Seismology is the study of the vibration of the Earth. Seismologists pay much attention to the main source of Earth vibration: earthquakes. But also other seismic sources, like mining blasts, ocean storms and windmills, are studied. All these sources induce seismic waves, which can eventually be recorded as ground vibrations. These seismic...

Global-scale seismic interferometry: Theory and numerical examples

Progress in the imaging of the mantle and core is partially limited by the sparse distribution of natural sources; the earthquake hypocenters are mainly along the active lithospheric plate boundaries. This problem can be approached with seismic interferometry. In recent years, there has been considerable progress in the development of seismic...