Ground motion prediction equations as a proxy for medium properties variation due to geothermal resources exploitation

Abstract

Sub surface operations for energy production such as gas storage, fluid injection or hydraulic fracking modify the physical properties of the crust, in particular seismic velocity and anelastic attenuation. Continuously measuring these properties may be crucial to monitor the status of the reservoir. Here we propose a not usual use of the empirical ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs) to monitor large-scale medium properties variations in a reservoir during fluid injection experiments. In practice, peak-ground velocities recorded during field operations are used to update the coefficients of a reference GMPE whose variation can be physically interpreted in terms of anelastic attenuation and seismic velocity. We apply the technique to earthquakes recorded at The Geysers geothermal field in Southern California and events occurred in the St. Gallen (Switzerland) geothermal field. Our results suggest that the GMPEs can be effectively used as a proxy for some reservoir properties variation by using induced earthquakes recorded at relatively dense networks.