Ondes sismiques en milieu complexe : mesure des variations temporelles des vitesses

The thesis concentrates on monitoring seismic speeds, especially in active fault zones. By correlating signals generated by background noise, one can estimate the Green's function of a medium. When continuously following these functions, wave speed changes in the medium can be detected. Monitoring methods are applied to data from an active fault zone in Parkfield, California, where two wave speed drops, which coincide with regional seismic events, are detected. The largest corresponds to an event close to the stations. Both speed drops are followed by a gradual postseismic relaxation. In order to understand the reliability of the measurements, we perform laboratory experiments. One interesting result of these experiments shows that an exact reconstruction of the Green's function is not necessary for monitoring, which opens up many possibilities of applications to seismology. Armed with this knowledge, the Parkfield data is analysed again. By improving the temporal resolution to 1 day, we show that the observed speed drop is coseismic with the Parkfield event. We establish that the speed fluctuations are not simply correlated to variations in noise source distribution obtained by beamforming. Finally, the developed methods are applied to an event in Japan. Since the array is spatially much larger than the one used at Parkfield, this data is analyzed to study the dependence between station-event distance and the measured seismic speed drop. STARLa thèse se concentre sur le suivi temporel des vitesses sismiques, notamment dans des zones de faille actives. En corrélant les signaux générés par le bruit ambiant, il est possible d'estimer la fonction de Green du milieu. Par le suivi continu de ces fonctions, des changements de vitesse dans le milieu peuvent être détectés. Les méthodes de suivi temporel sont appliquées aux données provenant d'une zone de faille active à Parkfield, Californie, ce qui permet de détecter deux chutes de vitesse. Ces dernières coïncident avec des évènements sismiques régionaux, la plus importante concernant un évènement proche des stations. Les deux chutes de vitesse sont suivies d'une récupération postsismique progressive. Pour mieux comprendre la fiabilité des mesures on a effectué des expériences en laboratoire. Un résultat intéressant de ces expériences montre que la reconstruction exacte de la fonction de Green n'est pas nécessaire pour le suivi temporel, ce qui ouvre la voie à de nombreuses possibilités d'applications en sismologie. Grâce à cette connaissance, la série de données de Parkfield a été ré-analysée. En améliorant la résolution temporelle à 1 journée, on montre que la chute de vitesse observée est cosismique avec le séisme de Parkfield. On a établi que les fluctuations de vitesse ne sont pas simplement corrélées aux variations de la distribution de sources du bruit obtenue par formation de voies. Enfin, les méthodes développées sont appliquées à un séisme au Japon. Le réseau étant de taille beaucoup plus grande que celui utilisé pour l'étude de Parkfield, ces données sont analysées pour étudier la dépendance entre la distance stations-séisme et la chute de vitesse mesurée

On the precision of noise correlation interferometry.

International audienceLong duration noisy-looking waveforms such as those obtained in randomly multiple scattering and reverberant media are complex; they resist direct interpretation. Nevertheless, such waveforms are sensitive to small changes in the source of the waves or in the medium in which they propagate. Monitoring such waveforms, whether obtained directly or obtained indirectly by noise correlation, is emerging as a technique for detecting changes in media. Interpretation of changes is in principle problematic; it is not always clear whether a change is due to sources or to the medium. Of particular interest is the detection of small changes in propagation speeds. An expression is derived here for the apparent, but illusory, waveform dilation due to a change of source. The expression permits changes in waveforms due to changes in wave speed to be distinguished with high precision from changes due to other reasons. The theory is successfully compared with analysis of a laboratory ultrasonic data set and a seismic data set from Parkfield California

Stability of Monitoring Weak Changes in Multiply Scattering Media with Ambient Noise Correlation: Laboratory Experiments

Previous studies have shown that small changes can be monitored in a scattering medium by observing phase shifts in the coda. Passive monitoring of weak changes through ambient noise correlation has already been applied to seismology, acoustics and engineering. Usually, this is done under the assumption that a properly reconstructed Green function as well as stable background noise sources are necessary. In order to further develop this monitoring technique, a laboratory experiment was performed in the 2.5MHz range in a gel with scattering inclusions, comparing an active (pulse-echo) form of monitoring to a passive (correlation) one. Present results show that temperature changes in the medium can be observed even if the Green function (GF) of the medium is not reconstructed. Moreover, this article establishes that the GF reconstruction in the correlations is not a necessary condition: the only condition to monitoring with correlation (passive experiment) is the relative stability of the background noise structure

Improving Temporal Resolution in Ambient Noise Monitoring of Seismic Wave Speed

10p.International audienceThe use of ambient seismic noise has been intensively investigated to perform passive tomography at various scales. Besides passive tomography, passive monitoring is another application of seismic noise correlation as was shown by the recent observation of postseismic velocity changes around the San Andreas Fault in Parkfield, California. One of the drawbacks of using ambient noise correlation for passive monitoring is the need to average the correlations over a long time period in order to obtain a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for the phase fluctuations to be measured accurately. For the application to passive monitoring, one wants the possibility of following short-term velocity variations (one day or less) using noise correlation functions calculated on short time windows. Another difficulty may then appear when the spatial distribution of noise sources also evolves with time. The aim of this paper is to introduce an adaptive filter to the Parkfield dataset in order to improve the SNR output of the ambient noise correlation functions. When applied to passive monitoring, the temporal resolution can be increased from 30 days up to 1 day. With this improved temporal resolution, the velocity drop observed at Parkfield is shown to be cosesimic with the September 24, 2004 M_w=6.0 event. The relationship between the measured velocity fluctuations and the time-evolution of the spatial distribution of the noise wavefield is also investigated. Finally, the error bar in the amplitudes of the velocity variations are compared with a theoretical expectation

Continuous isolated noise sources induce repeating waves in the coda of ambient noise correlations

Continuous excitation of isolated noise sources leads to repeating wave arrivals in cross correlations of ambient seismic noise, including throughout their coda. These waves propagate from the isolated sources. We observe this effect on correlation wavefields computed from two years of field data recorded at the Gräfenberg array in Germany and two master stations in Europe. Beamforming the correlation functions in the secondary microseism frequency band reveals repeating waves incoming from distinct directions to the West, which correspond to well-known dominant microseism source locations in the Northeastern Atlantic Ocean. These emerge in addition to the expected anti-causal and causal correlation wavefield contributions by boundary sources, which are converging onto and diverging from the master station, respectively. Numerical simulations reproduce this observation. We first model a source repeatedly exciting a wavelet, which helps illustrate the fundamental mechanism behind repeated wave generation. Second, we model continuously acting secondary microseism sources and find good agreement with our observations. Our observations and modelling have potentially significant implications for the understanding of correlation wavefields and monitoring of relative velocity changes in particular. Velocity monitoring commonly assumes that only multiply scattered waves, originating from the master station, are present in the coda of the correlation wavefield. We show that repeating waves propagating from isolated noise sources may dominate instead, including the very late coda. Our results imply that in the presence of continously acting noise sources, which we show is the case for ordinary recordings of ocean microseisms, velocity monitoring assuming scattered waves may be adversely affected with regard to measurement technique, spatial resolution, as well as temporal resolution. We further demonstrate that the very late coda of correlation functions contains useful signal, contrary to the common sentiment that it is dominated by instrument noise

Seismic interferometry in the presence of an isolated noise source

Seismic interferometry gives rise to a correlation wavefield that is closely related to the Green’s function under the condition of uniformly distributed noise sources. In the presence of an additional isolated noise source, a second contribution to this wavefield is introduced that emerges from the isolated source location at negative lapse time. These two contributions interfere, which may bias surface wave dispersion measurements significantly. To avoid bias, the causal and acausal parts of correlation functions need to be treated separately. We illustrate this by applying seismic interferometry to field data from a large-N array where a wind farm is present within the arra

Seismic waves in complex media : measuring temporal velocity variations

La thèse se concentre sur le suivi temporel des vitesses sismiques, notamment dans des zones de faille actives. En corrélant les signaux générés par le bruit ambiant, il est possible d'estimer la fonction de Green du milieu. Par le suivi continu de ces fonctions, des changements de vitesse dans le milieu peuvent être détectés. Les méthodes de suivi temporel sont appliquées aux données provenant d'une zone de faille active à Parkfield, Californie, ce qui permet de détecter deux chutes de vitesse. Ces dernières coïncident avec des évènements sismiques régionaux, la plus importante concernant un évènement proche des stations. Les deux chutes de vitesse sont suivies d'une récupération postsismique progressive. Pour mieux comprendre la fiabilité des mesures on a effectué des expériences en laboratoire. Un résultat intéressant de ces expériences montre que la reconstruction exacte de la fonction de Green n'est pas nécessaire pour le suivi temporel, ce qui ouvre la voie à de nombreuses possibilités d'applications en sismologie. Grâce à cette connaissance, la série de données de Parkfield a été ré-analysée. En améliorant la résolution temporelle à 1 journée, on montre que la chute de vitesse observée est cosismique avec le séisme de Parkfield. On a établi que les fluctuations de vitesse ne sont pas simplement corrélées aux variations de la distribution de sources du bruit obtenue par formation de voies. Enfin, les méthodes développées sont appliquées à un séisme au Japon. Le réseau étant de taille beaucoup plus grande que celui utilisé pour l'étude de Parkfield, ces données sont analysées pour étudier la dépendance entre la distance stations-séisme et la chute de vitesse mesurée.The thesis concentrates on monitoring seismic speeds, especially in active fault zones. By correlating signals generated by background noise, one can estimate the Green's function of a medium. When continuously following these functions, wave speed changes in the medium can be detected. Monitoring methods are applied to data from an active fault zone in Parkfield, California, where two wave speed drops, which coincide with regional seismic events, are detected. The largest corresponds to an event close to the stations. Both speed drops are followed by a gradual postseismic relaxation. In order to understand the reliability of the measurements, we perform laboratory experiments. One interesting result of these experiments shows that an exact reconstruction of the Green's function is not necessary for monitoring, which opens up many possibilities of applications to seismology. Armed with this knowledge, the Parkfield data is analysed again. By improving the temporal resolution to 1 day, we show that the observed speed drop is coseismic with the Parkfield event. We establish that the speed fluctuations are not simply correlated to variations in noise source distribution obtained by beamforming. Finally, the developed methods are applied to an event in Japan. Since the array is spatially much larger than the one used at Parkfield, this data is analyzed to study the dependence between station-event distance and the measured seismic speed drop. STA

The seismological signature of cyclonic storms through the ears of a sensor array

Under certain conditions, ocean surface gravity waves (SGW) interact with the seafloor underneath to trigger relatively faint but measurable seismic waves known as ocean microseisms. Cyclonic storms (e.g. hurricanes, typhoons) wandering over the ocean are major (non-stationary) sources of the former, thus opening the possibility of tracking and studying cyclones by means of their corresponding microseims. For this purpose, we identified storm-related microseisms hidden in the ambient seismic wavefield via array processing. Polarization beamforming, a robust and well-known technique is implemented. The analyses hinge on surface waves (Love and Rayleigh) which, in contrast to P-waves, are stronger but only constrain direction of arrival (without source remoteness). We use a few land-based virtual seismic arrays surrounding the North Atlantic to investigate the signatures of major hurricanes in the microseismic band (0.05-0.16 Hz), in a joint attempt to continuously triangulate their tracks. Our findings show that storm microseisms are intermittently excited with modulated amplitude at localized oceanic regions, particularly over the shallow continental shelves and slopes, having maximum amplitudes virtually independent of storm category. In most cases no detection was possible over deep oceanic regions, nor at distant arrays. Additionally, the rear quadrants and trailing swells of the cyclone provide the optimum SGW spectrum for the generation of microseisms, often shifted more than 500 km off the "eye". As a result of the aforementioned and added to the strong attenuation of storm microseisms, the inversion of tracks or physical properties of storms using a few far-field arrays is discontinuous in most cases, being reliable only if benchmark atmospheric and/or oceanic data is available for comparison. Even if challenging due to the complexity of the coupled phenomena responsible for microseisms, the inversion of site properties, such as bathymetric parameters (e.g. depth, seabed geomorphology), near- bottom geology or SGW spectrum might be possible if storms are treated as natural sources in time-lapse ambient noise investigations. This will likely require near-field (land and underwater) observations using optimal arrays or dense, widespread sensor networks. Improved detection and understanding of ocean microseisms carries a great potential to contribute to mechanically coupled atmosphere-ocean-earth models.Universität Hamburgposte

Ondes sismiques en milieu complexe (mesure des variations temporelles des vitesses)

La thèse se concentre sur le suivi temporel des vitesses sismiques, notamment dans des zones de faille actives. En corrélant les signaux générés par le bruit ambiant, il est possible d'estimer la fonction de Green du milieu. Par le suivi continu de ces fonctions, des changements de vitesse dans le milieu peuvent être détectés. Les méthodes de suivi temporel sont appliquées aux données provenant d'une zone de faille active à Parkfield, Californie, ce qui permet de détecter deux chutes de vitesse. Ces dernières coïncident avec des évènements sismiques régionaux, la plus importante concernant un évènement proche des stations. Les deux chutes de vitesse sont suivies d'une récupération postsismique progressive. Pour mieux comprendre la fiabilité des mesures on a effectué des expériences en laboratoire. Un résultat intéressant de ces expériences montre que la reconstruction exacte de la fonction de Green n'est pas nécessaire pour le suivi temporel, ce qui ouvre la voie à de nombreuses possibilités d'applications en sismologie. Grâce à cette connaissance, la série de données de Parkfield a été ré-analysée. En améliorant la résolution temporelle à 1 journée, on montre que la chute de vitesse observée est cosismique avec le séisme de Parkfield. On a établi que les fluctuations de vitesse ne sont pas simplement corrélées aux variations de la distribution de sources du bruit obtenue par formation de voies. Enfin, les méthodes développées sont appliquées à un séisme au Japon. Le réseau étant de taille beaucoup plus grande que celui utilisé pour l'étude de Parkfield, ces données sont analysées pour étudier la dépendance entre la distance stations-séisme et la chute de vitesse mesurée.The thesis concentrates on monitoring seismic speeds, especially in active fault zones. By correlating signals generated by background noise, one can estimate the Green's function of a medium. When continuously following these functions, wave speed changes in the medium can be detected. Monitoring methods are applied to data from an active fault zone in Parkfield, California, where two wave speed drops, which coincide with regional seismic events, are detected. The largest corresponds to an event close to the stations. Both speed drops are followed by a gradual postseismic relaxation. In order to understand the reliability of the measurements, we perform laboratory experiments. One interesting result of these experiments shows that an exact reconstruction of the Green's function is not necessary for monitoring, which opens up many possibilities of applications to seismology. Armed with this knowledge, the Parkfield data is analysed again. By improving the temporal resolution to 1 day, we show that the observed speed drop is coseismic with the Parkfield event. We establish that the speed fluctuations are not simply correlated to variations in noise source distribution obtained by beamforming. Finally, the developed methods are applied to an event in Japan. Since the array is spatially much larger than the one used at Parkfield, this data is analyzed to study the dependence between station-event distance and the measured seismic speed drop. STARSAVOIE-SCD - Bib.électronique (730659901) / SudocGRENOBLE1/INP-Bib.électronique (384210012) / SudocGRENOBLE2/3-Bib.électronique (384219901) / SudocSudocFranceF