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Explosive Energy Release of Gas Emission Craters in the Russian Arctic and Their Associated Seismic Magnitudes: Estimates and Implications

Description: 

Explosively formed permafrost craters located in the Russian Arctic have only recently been investigated by targeted, scientific expeditions (Kizyakov et al., 2015). Since their discovery, satellite images have helped identify such craters that formed as early as 2011 (Zolkos et al., 2021). In a few cases, local observations can constrain the formation date of craters to less than a day, but other craters have formation date uncertainties that span months to years. Here, we hypothesize that seismic detection may constrain crater formation dates for craters already identified by satellite imagery. Published descriptions of any crater-sourced seismicity are restricted to 1) hypotheses that small seismic events in the Barents-Kara region recorded by the Norwegian Seismic Array associate with craters (Bogoyavlensky et al., 2020, 2022), or 2) one report in a Russian journal that a temporary seismic network recorded a crater-forming event (Titovsky et al., 2018).

Our work estimates the explosive size of such crater-forming events to quantify their seismic detectability, with current sensor deployments. These estimates use published parameters like crater depth and diameter for some craters. We leverage research on maars (craters formed as shallow magma interacts with water, e.g., Valentine et al., 2014) and explosive craters on planetary bodies (e.g., Mitri et al., 2019), which exploit similar parameters and assumptions about the explosive reaction. Following these methods, we use scaling relationships derived from Holsapple & Schmidt (1980) to estimate the energy of crater formation. It is important to correctly screen these crater events from active-source or other gas explosions (natural gas development wells and transport pipelines), as well as track changes in crater formation timing and/or frequency under a changing climate. Continued study of these explosive events has implications for disciplines ranging from permafrost stability to nuclear explosion monitoring.

Session: Detecting, Locating, Characterizing and Monitoring Non-earthquake Seismoacoustic Sources [Poster]

Type: Poster

Date: 4/19/2023

Presentation Time: 08:00 AM (local time)

Presenting Author: Chris G. Carr

Student Presenter: No

Invited Presentation: 

Authors