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Microseismic source inversion in anisotropic media

University of British Columbia

Sedimentary rocks and shales in particular are known to be anisotropic, sometimes strongly so, and hydraulic fracturing is now common practice in shale plays to enhance the extraction of hydrocarbons. One of the ways to understand the hydraulic fracturing process is through the micro--earthquakes that it generates; it is therefore of interest to study the impact that anisotropy may have on hydraulically induced seismicity. This thesis is concerned with the inclusion of anisotropy into the geophysical forward and inverse problems of microseismic sources. Ray theory is used for the forward problem --- dynamic ray tracing in a medium composed of homogeneous layers with vertical transverse isotropy (VTI) is used and the possibility of qSv triplication is considered. Novel approaches to the inverse problem are introduced, including waveform fitting in the frequency domain to recover the source function as well as moment tensor. Uncertainties in estimated moment tensor components are quantified with multi--variate normal sampling utilizing the full covariance matrix from the linear inversion. A new decomposition of the moment tensor is described that removes the distortions due to anisotropy local to the source and a new way to visualize an earthquake source is also introduced. The impact of anisotropy on moment tensor inversion and decomposition is shown to be significant. Field data recorded by two downhole arrays of multicomponent receivers are analyzed using the new techniques. The event collection suggests a source mechanism dominated by cylindrical dilatation. This is unexpected but is supported by results from another code. Future directions include extensions to lower symmetry forms of anisotropy and application to surface arrays. Preliminary analysis of downhole recordings of aftershocks of the 2008 Mw=7.9 Wenchuan earthquake is shown.

Text

2014-08-19

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Canada

http://hdl.handle.net/2429/50045

Geophysics

University of British Columbia

UBCV

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.5/ca/