Abstract
Induced earthquakes tend to be shallow, while tectonic events often occur in deeper parts of the Earth. A well-estimated hypocenter with uncertainties may help to evaluate whether an event is of an induced or tectonic origin. In this study, we focus on the development of a hypocenter method that helps to better define the source location of an earthquake and reduce the spatial error of the measurement. The hypocenter and the uncertainty is obtained by using the P- and S-wave phase time difference for a station and the P-wave traveltime differences between pairs of stations simultaneously in the hypocenter analysis. The uncertainty inherent to an imperfect reference velocity model, modelling, instrumental inaccuracy and phase time picking is propagated into the spacial hypocenter solution. A refined hypocenter methodology is successfully tested in a synthetic experiment with shallow (\(\sim \) 5 km), intermediate (\(\sim \) 10 km) and deep source points (\(\sim \) 15 km). The synthetic experiment indeed shows that it is possible to separate earthquakes by their depth solution, hence offering an indication that the event is either induced or tectonic. Case studies are presented of estimations of hypocenters and error ellipses for (1) induced seismicity at sites for gas storage in salt domes, geothermal production and gas extraction as well as (2) tectonic events.
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Availability of data and materials
Netherlands Seismic and Acoustic Network. Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI). A description of the hypocenter method and velocity profiles in the seismological operations is made available.
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A Python program is provided to perform the hypocenter analysis for a constant velocity model.
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Acknowledgements
The involvement of Hugues Dijkpesse in the development of the hypocenter uncertainty methodology is acknowledged by the authors. ER worked in an intern project supervised by Hugues. JS met Hugues when both were students in the group of Albert Tarantola in 1995 in Paris. DB implemented the kurtosis methodology by Baillard et al. (2014) during an internship at the KNMI. She extracted P- and S-phase arrivals from waveforms of induced earthquakes in Groningen. The kurtosis program is used in this study to estimate the first arrivals of P- and S-waves from the finite-difference waveform simulations to construct traveltime tables. Pauline Kruiver from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute proof read the manuscript. The editor Klaus Hinzen and the two reviewers, Joachim Ritter and one anonymous, are acknowledged for their good suggestions that helped to improve the paper.
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Highlights
\(\bullet \) A combination of differences between P- and S-time picks per station and P-time picks per two stations allows for a focused hypocenter solution.
\(\bullet \) The uncertainty associated to the hypocenter is estimated from the 95 % confidence area of the 3D objective function.
\(\bullet \) The hypocenter solution for induced earthquakes due to gas storage, gas extraction and geothermal activities as well as for tectonic events are estimated.
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Spetzler, J., Ruigrok, E. & Bouwman, D. Hypocenter uncertainty analysis of induced and tectonic earthquakes in the Netherlands. J Seismol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-024-10205-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-024-10205-8