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Seismicity Monitoring With Long-Range DAS Systems

Session: Fiber-Optic Seismology I

Type: Oral

Date: 4/23/2021

Presentation Time: 09:45 AM Pacific

Description: 

Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) interrogator units can utilize either existing or temporarily deployed fiber-optic cables to sense ground motion or subsurface strain. A multitude of recent investigations make use of these telecom-grade fiber optic cables that are widely installed for a variety of purposes including data communication and monitoring of powerlines, pipelines, and other permanent infrastructure. These cables can be interrogated to obtain information about the surrounding or the subsurface medium. Deploying DAS systems on such cables saves cost, increases efficiency and allows us to easily produce Large-N sensor networks. The large number of fiber-based sensors (thousands to many tens of thousands on a single fiber) lends itself to multi-channel processing techniques and machine learning algorithms. Over the last several years, we have seen a steady increase in the extent of the sensing arrays that one DAS interrogation system can support. For example, a current system is capable of supporting a sensing array of 100km with a channel spacing of 10m. It is important to note that this is achieved without the need to install additional amplification devices along the sensing fiber, thus simplifying rapid and temporary deployments tremendously. We show several data examples of small local or regional earthquakes detected and recorded on a 100km sensing array.

Presenting Author: Martin Karrenbach

Student Presenter: No

Authors