Abstract
Abstract. Rainfall-triggered fluid flow in a mechanical fracture zone associated with a seismic fault has been estimated (Tanaka et al., 2011) using muon radiography by measuring the water position over time in response to rainfall events. In this report, the data taken by Tanaka et al. (2011) are reanalyzed to estimate the porosity distribution as a function of a distance from the fault gouge. The result shows a similar pattern of the porosity distribution as measured by borehole sampling at Nojima fault. There is a low porosity shear zone axis surrounded by porous damaged areas with density increasing with the distance from the fault gouge. The dynamic muon radiography (Tanaka et al., 2011) provides a new method to delineate both the recharge and discharge zones along the fault segment, an entire hydrothermal circulation system. This might dramatically raise the success rate for drilling of geothermal exploration wells, and it might open a new horizon in the geothermal exploration and monitoring.
Highlights
Fluid flow through geological-scale porous media is of great importance in many areas ranging from civil engineering to geothermal technologies
Among various physical quantities measured in the earth’s crust, density plays a special role because it is readily interpreted in terms of porosity of fracture-filling rocks; the permeability of the fault zones can be estimated from muon radiography
Tanaka et al (2011) measured rainfall-triggered fluid flow in a fracture zone associated with a seismic fault located in Itoigawa–Shizuoka tectonic line with muon radiography
Summary
Fluid flow through geological-scale porous media is of great importance in many areas ranging from civil engineering to geothermal technologies. Technical limitations include the need for a topographically prominent feature of interest, and there will only be results for the volume located above the detector This is why a seismic fault on a hill slope made a good study target in the work by Tanaka et al (2011) (Fig. 1). Among various physical quantities measured in the earth’s crust, density plays a special role because it is readily interpreted in terms of porosity of fracture-filling rocks; the permeability of the fault zones can be estimated from muon radiography. Tanaka et al (2011) measured rainfall-triggered fluid flow in a fracture zone associated with a seismic fault located in Itoigawa–Shizuoka tectonic line with muon radiography. Possible geothermal exploration and monitoring utilizing muon radiography is discussed
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