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Reno, Nevada Dark Fiber DAS Experiment: Frequency Response Among Various Seismic Instruments

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) gives seismologists and engineers a relatively new and advantageous way to monitor earthquakes and other seismic signals with spatially dense measurements, notably as dark fiber in urban environments where monitoring and seismic hazard assessment are important. However, the ability to use dark fiber in these urban environments to determine the subsurface structure and source characterization of earthquakes has not yet been fully established; additionally, using dark fiber for DAS in urban areas depends on the configuration and materials in which the cable was buried, so it differs between experiments and locations within an experiment. We conducted a dark fiber DAS experiment in 2021 from August 27^th to October 1^st, mainly within the downtown city center of Reno, Nevada. We measured and analyzed ~12 km of dark fiber. We installed 27 temporary nodal seismometers at various locations along the cable and gathered data from a permanently installed seismometer run by the Nevada Seismological Laboratory. We aim to compare the dark fiber DAS data with nodal and traditional seismometer data to improve seismic hazard analysis in an urban environment and determine if we can accurately characterize earthquake source properties. We were able to detect several local and teleseismic events. We chose to analyze two small local events (M 3.2 and M 2.5) and an M 7.4 Mexico event. We present preliminary results comparing the frequency response among the different instruments.

Session: Fiber Optic Seismology: Understanding Earth Structure and Dynamics with Distributed Sensors [Poster]

Type: Poster

Room: Evergreen Ballroom

Date: 4/21/2022

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM Pacific

Presenting Author: Rachel L. Hatch-Ibarra

Student Presenter: No

Additional Authors