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Prospects for Distributed Acoustic Sensing of Polar Environmental Processes: Initial Results From the Beaufort Sea, Alaska

Session: Fiber-Optic Seismology II [Poster]

Type: Poster

Date: 4/23/2021

Presentation Time: 03:45 PM Pacific

Description: 

Distributed acoustic sensors (DAS) deployed along marine seafloors have the potential to observe a broad range of solid-Earth elastic, ocean acoustic, and ocean gravity wavefields generated by an equally diverse collection of environmental (e.g., ocean waves), anthropogenic (e.g., commercial shipping), and biogenic (e.g., whale and seal vocalizations) sources. In polar regions, these near-shore wavefields are further complicated by a seasonally variable sea ice layer that 1) supports exotic floating-elastic-plate wave modes that may couple into fluid acoustic modes; 2) dramatically alters the dynamics of ocean wave propagation and coupling with the solid Earth; and 3) generates diffuse, short-period cryoseismic noise that may occult anthropogenic or biogenic signals. To evaluate the efficacy of DAS for continuous and in situ monitoring of polar environmental processes, we present initial observations from a 30 km long seafloor telecommunications fiber located on the continental shelf of the Beaufort Sea, Alaska, collected during one week of continuous recording in February, 2021, under conditions of total sea ice coverage. We also characterize meteorologic noise and anthropogenic signals from a nearby ice road serving an offshore oil production well. SNL is managed and operated by NTESS under DOE NNSA contract DE-NA0003525.

Presenting Author: Michael G. Baker

Student Presenter: No

Authors