Patricia Martínez-Garzón

Spatiotemporal changes, faulting regimes, and source parameters of induced seismicity: A case study from The Geysers geothermal field

The spatiotemporal, kinematic, and source characteristics of induced seismicity occurring at different fluid injection rates are investigated to determine the predominant physical mechanisms responsible for induced seismicity at the northwestern part of The Geysers geothermal field, California. We analyze a relocated hypocenter catalog from a seismicity cluster where significant variations of the stress tensor orientation were previously observed to correlate with injection rates. We find that these stress tensor orientation changes may be related to increased pore pressure and the corresponding changes in poroelastic stresses at reservoir depth. Seismic events during peak injections tend to occur at greater distances from the injection well, preferentially trending parallel to the maximum horizontal stress direction. In contrast, at lower injection rates the seismicity tends to align in a different direction which suggests the presence of a local fault. During peak injection intervals, the relative contribution of strike-slip faulting mechanisms increases. Furthermore, increases in fluid injection rates also coincide with a decrease in b values. Our observations suggest that regardless of the injection stage, most of the induced seismicity results from thermal fracturing of the reservoir rock. However, during peak injection intervals, the increase in pore pressure may likewise be responsible for the induced seismicity. By estimating the thermal and hydraulic diffusivities of the reservoir, we confirm that the characteristic diffusion length for pore pressure is much greater than the corresponding length scale for temperature and also more consistent with the spatial extent of seismicity observed during different injection rates.

Effects of long‐term fluid injection on induced seismicity parameters and maximum magnitude in northwestern part of The Geysers geothermal field

The long-term temporal and spatial changes in statistical, source, and stress characteristics of one cluster of induced seismicity recorded at The Geysers geothermal field (U.S.) are analyzed in relation to the field operations, fluid migration, and constraints on the maximum likely magnitude. Two injection wells, Prati-9 and Prati-29, located in the northwestern part of the field and their associated seismicity composed of 1776 events recorded throughout a 7 year period were analyzed. The seismicity catalog was relocated, and the source characteristics including focal mechanisms and static source parameters were refined using first-motion polarity, spectral fitting, and mesh spectral ratio analysis techniques. The source characteristics together with statistical parameters (b value) and cluster dynamics were used to investigate and understand the details of fluid migration scheme in the vicinity of injection wells. The observed temporal, spatial, and source characteristics were clearly attributed to fluid injection and fluid migration toward greater depths, involving increasing pore pressure in the reservoir. The seasonal changes of injection rates were found to directly impact the shape and spatial extent of the seismic cloud. A tendency of larger seismic events to occur closer to injection wells and a correlation between the spatial extent of the seismic cloud and source sizes of the largest events was observed suggesting geometrical constraints on the maximum likely magnitude and its correlation to the average injection rate and volume of fluids present in the reservoir.

Volumetric components in the earthquake source related to fluid injection and stress state

We investigate source processes of fluid-induced seismicity from The Geysers geothermal reservoir in California to determine their relation with hydraulic operations and improve the corresponding seismic hazard estimates. Analysis of 869 well-constrained full moment tensors (Mw 0.8–3.5) reveals significant non-double-couple components (>25%) for about 65% of the events. Volumetric deformation is governed by cumulative injection rates with larger non-double-couple components observed near the wells and during high injection periods. Source mechanisms are magnitude dependent and vary significantly between faulting regimes. Normal faulting events (Mw   2.5. Our results imply that source processes and magnitudes of fluid-induced seismic events are strongly affected by the hydraulic operations, the reservoir stress state, and the faulting regime.

HybridMT: A MATLAB/Shell Environment Package for Seismic Moment Tensor Inversion and Refinement

We present the software package hybridMT which allows performing seismic moment tensor inversion and refinement, optimized for earthquake data recorded by regional‐to‐local seismic networks as well as for acoustic emission activity. The provided software package is designed predominantly for use in MATLAB (see [Data and Resources][1])/shell environments. The algorithm uses first P ‐wave amplitudes to invert for unconstrained full, deviatoric, and double‐couple constrained moment tensors. Uncertainty assessment is performed by bootstrap resampling. The moment tensor inversion may be performed directly in the shell environment (by a dedicated command‐line tool) or conveniently through the MATLAB interface (m‐functions). In addition to moment tensor inversion, we also provide the MATLAB implementation of the hybrid moment tensor technique. This methodology increases the quality of calculated seismic moment tensors from events forming a spatial cluster by assessing and correcting for poorly known path and site effects. We tested hybridMT on synthetic datasets, acoustic emission data recorded during laboratory rock deformation experiments, and induced seismicity data from a geothermal reservoir. The package is supplemented with extensive documentation, tutorials, and a dedicated website. HybridMT is freely available and distributed under General Public License. [1]: #sec-10

A refined methodology for stress inversions of earthquake focal mechanisms

We develop an improved methodology for reliable high-resolution inversions of focal mechanisms to background stress field orientation and stress ratio R in two or three dimensions. The earthquake catalog is declustered to remove events likely affected strongly by local stress interactions rather than reflecting the large-scale background stress field. The declustered data are discretized with the k-means algorithm into groups containing a number of focal mechanisms between a minimum number Nmin and 2Nmin. Synthetic tests indicate that Nmin ≈ 30 provides stable inversion results under different stress regimes and noise conditions when R ≈ 0.5, while Nmin ≈ 45 is needed for R near 0 or 1. Additional synthetic tests compare the performance of selecting the fault plane of each focal mechanism using (a) the plane with lowest misfit angle between the slip vector from the focal mechanism and shear traction from the stress tensor and (b) the plane with highest instability coefficient representing proximity to the optimally oriented fault for given stress field and friction coefficient. The instability criterion is found to provide more accurate inversion results under all tested stress regimes, stress ratios, and noise conditions. The refined inversion methodology combines selecting fault planes using the instability criterion iteratively with a damped simultaneous inversion of different focal mechanism groups. Results characterizing neighborhoods of discretized domains merged during the damped inversion provide high-resolution information independent of the discretization. Some aspects of the methodology are illustrated with focal mechanism data from the San Jacinto Fault Zone in Southern California.

Impact of fluid injection on fracture reactivation at The Geysers geothermal field

We analyze the spatiotemporal distribution of fault geometries from seismicity induced by fluid injection at The Geysers geothermal field. The consistency of these faults with the local stress field is investigated using (1) the fault instability coefficient I comparing the orientation of a fault with the optimal orientation for failure in the assumed stress field and (2) the misfit angle β between slip vectors observed from focal mechanisms and predicted from stress tensor. A statistical approach is applied to calculate the most likely fault instabilities considering the uncertainties from focal mechanisms and stress inversion. We find that faults activated by fluid injection may display a broad range in orientations. About 72% of the analyzed seismicity occurs on faults with favorable orientation for failure with respect to the stress field. However, a number of events are observed either to occur on severely misoriented faults or to slip in a different orientation than predicted from stress field. These events mostly occur during periods of high injection rates and are located in proximity to the injection wells. From the stress inversion, the friction coefficient providing the largest overall instability is μ = 0.5. About 91% of the events are activated with an estimated excess pore pressure <10 MPa, in agreement with previous models considering the combined effect of thermal and poroelastic stress changes from fluid injection. Furthermore, high seismic activity and largest magnitudes occur on favorably oriented faults with large instability coefficients and low slip misfit angles.

Sensitivity of stress inversion of focal mechanisms to pore pressure changes

We investigate the sensitivity of stress inversion from focal mechanisms to pore pressure changes. Synthetic tests reveal that pore pressure variations can cause apparent changes in the retrieved stress ratio R relating the magnitude of the intermediate principal stress with respect to the maximum and minimum principal stresses. Pore pressure and retrieved R are negatively correlated when R is low (R   0.6. This observation is independent of faulting style, and it may be related to different performance of the fault plane selection criterion and variability in orientation of activated faults under different pore pressures. Our findings from synthetic data are supported by results obtained from induced seismicity at The Geysers geothermal field. Therefore, the retrieved stress ratio variations can be utilized for monitoring pore pressure changes at seismogenic depth in stress domains with overall low R.

Scaling of maximum observed magnitudes with geometrical and stress properties of strike‐slip faults

We test potential scaling between observed maximum earthquake magnitudes along 27 strike-slip faults with various properties including cumulative displacement, mapped fault length, seismogenic thickness, slip rates, and angle between fault strike and maximum horizontal stress. For 75–80% of the data set, the observed maximum scalar moment scales with the product of seismogenic thickness and either cumulative displacement or mapped fault length. Most faults from this population have slip rates >5 mm/yr (interplate faults), cumulative displacement >10 km, and relatively high angles to the maximum horizontal stress orientation. The remaining 20–25% population involves events at some distance from a plate boundary with slip rate <5 mm/yr, cumulative displacements <10 km, and ≈ 45° to the maximum horizontal stress. These earthquakes have larger magnitudes than the previous population, likely because of larger stress drops. The most likely interpretation of the results is that the maximum rupture length, and hence earthquake magnitudes, correlates with the cumulative displacement and the fault surface length. The results also suggest that progressive fault smoothing may lead to decreasing coseismic stress drops.

Microseismic Monitoring of CO2 Injection at the Penn West Enhanced Oil Recovery Pilot Project, Canada: Implications for Detection of Wellbore Leakage

A passive seismic monitoring campaign was carried out in the frame of a CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) pilot project in Alberta, Canada. Our analysis focuses on a two-week period during which prominent downhole pressure fluctuations in the reservoir were accompanied by a leakage of CO2 and CH4 along the monitoring well equipped with an array of short-period borehole geophones. We applied state of the art seismological processing schemes to the continuous seismic waveform recordings. During the analyzed time period we did not find evidence of induced micro-seismicity associated with CO2 injection. Instead, we identified signals related to the leakage of CO2 and CH4, in that seven out of the eight geophones show a clearly elevated noise level framing the onset time of leakage along the monitoring well. Our results confirm that micro-seismic monitoring of reservoir treatment can contribute towards improved reservoir monitoring and leakage detection.

Temporal static stress drop variations due to injection activity at The Geysers geothermal field, California

We use a high-quality data set from the NW part of The Geysers geothermal field to determine statistical significance of temporal static stress drop variations and their relation to injection rate changes. We use a group of 322 seismic events which occurred in the proximity of Prati-9 and Prati-29 injection wells to examine the influence of parameters such as moment magnitude, focal mechanism, hypocentral depth, and normalized hypocentral distances from open-hole sections of injection wells on static stress drop changes. Our results indicate that (1) static stress drop variations in time are statistically significant, (2) statistically significant static stress drop changes are inversely related to injection rate fluctuations. Therefore, it is highly expected that static stress drop of seismic events is influenced by pore pressure in underground fluid injection conditions and depends on the effective normal stress and strength of the medium.