TY - JOUR A1 - Streich, R. A1 - Becken, Michael T1 - Sensitivity of controlled-source electromagnetic fields in planarly layered media JF - Geophysical journal international N2 - The study of electromagnetic (EM) field sensitivities is useful for assessing the feasibility of controlled-source electromagnetic (CSEM) surveys. Sensitivity calculations are also a principal building block of EM inversion schemes. Sensitivities are formally given by the derivatives of the EM field components with respect to conductivity. For horizontally layered media, these derivatives can be evaluated analytically, offering advantages in computational efficiency and accuracy over numerical evaluation. We present a complete set of explicit analytic expressions for the EM field sensitivities in 1-D VTI-anisotropic media for horizontal and vertical electric and magnetic dipole sources, and also for finite horizontal electric sources. Since our derivations are based on a formulation for EM fields that is quite general in allowing for sources and receivers at any depth, our sensitivity expressions exhibit the same generality. We verify our expressions by comparison to numerical solutions, and finally present application examples that demonstrate the utility and versatility of these expressions for CSEM feasibility studies. KW - Electromagnetic theory Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-246X.2011.05203.x SN - 0956-540X VL - 187 IS - 2 SP - 705 EP - 728 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Hoboken ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Streich, Rita A1 - Becken, Michael A1 - Ritter, Oliver T1 - Imaging of CO2 storage sites, geothermal reservoirs, and gas shales using controlled-source magnetotellurics : modeling studies N2 - To balance the steady decrease of conventional hydrocarbon resources, increased utilization of unconventional and new energy resources, such as shale gas and geothermal energy, is required. Also, the geological sequestration of carbon dioxide is being considered as a technology that may temporarily mitigate the effects of CO2 emission. Sites suitable for shale gas production, geothermal exploration, or CO2 sequestration are commonly characterized by electrical resistivities distinctly different from those of the surrounding rocks. Therefore, electromagnetic methods can be viable tools to help identify target sites suitable for exploration, and to monitor reservoirs during energy production or CO2 injection. Among the wide variety of electromagnetic methods available, controlled-source magnetotelluric (CSMT) may be particularly suitable because of (i) its ability to resolve both electrically resistive and conductive structures, (ii) controlled sources offering noise control and thus facilitating surveys in populated regions, and (iii) the potential of penetration throughout the depth range accessible by drilling. Nevertheless, CSMT has not yet been widely employed because of logistical challenges of field operations and the requirement of complex and highly computer-intensive data processing. With these difficulties gradually being mitigated by recent technological developments, CSMT may now be reconsidered as an exploration tool. Here, we investigate by 1D and 3D numerical simulations the feasibility of detecting gas shales and identifying sites eligible for geothermal exploration or CO2 sequestration from CSMT data. We consider surface-to-surface, borehole-to-surface, and cross-hole configurations of the sources and receivers. Results and conclusions on the detectability of the targets of interest are presented for various exploration and monitoring scenarios, which are roughly representative of the geological setting of the North German Basin. Y1 - 2010 UR - http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/00092819 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chemer.2010.05.004 SN - 0009-2819 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Streich, Rita A1 - Becken, Michael T1 - Electromagnetic fields generated by finite-length wire sources: comparison with point dipole solutions JF - Geophysical prospecting N2 - In present-day land and marine controlled-source electromagnetic (CSEM) surveys, electromagnetic fields are commonly generated using wires that are hundreds of metres long. Nevertheless, simulations of CSEM data often approximate these sources as point dipoles. Although this is justified for sufficiently large source-receiver distances, many real surveys include frequencies and distances at which the dipole approximation is inaccurate. For 1D layered media, electromagnetic (EM) fields for point dipole sources can be computed using well-known quasi-analytical solutions and fields for sources of finite length can be synthesized by superposing point dipole fields. However, the calculation of numerous point dipole fields is computationally expensive, requiring a large number of numerical integral evaluations. We combine a more efficient representation of finite-length sources in terms of components related to the wire and its end points with very general expressions for EM fields in 1D layered media. We thus obtain a formulation that requires fewer numerical integrations than the superposition of dipole fields, permits source and receiver placement at any depth within the layer stack and can also easily be integrated into 3D modelling algorithms. Complex source geometries, such as wires bent due to surface obstructions, can be simulated by segmenting the wire and computing the responses for each segment separately. We first describe our finite-length wire expressions and then present 1D and 3D examples of EM fields due to finite-length sources for typical land and marine survey geometries and discuss differences to point dipole fields. KW - Electromagnetics KW - Mathematical formulation KW - Modelling KW - Numerical study Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2478.2010.00926.x SN - 0016-8025 VL - 59 IS - 2 SP - 361 EP - 374 PB - Wiley-Blackwell CY - Malden ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Becken, Michael A1 - Ritter, Oliver A1 - Bedrosian, Paul A. A1 - Weckmann, Ute T1 - Correlation between deep fluids, tremor and creep along the central San Andreas fault JF - Nature : the international weekly journal of science N2 - The seismicity pattern along the San Andreas fault near Parkfield and Cholame, California, varies distinctly over a length of only fifty kilometres. Within the brittle crust, the presence of frictionally weak minerals, fault-weakening high fluid pressures and chemical weakening are considered possible causes of an anomalously weak fault northwest of Parkfield(1-4). Non-volcanic tremor from lower-crustal and upper-mantle depths(5-7) is most pronounced about thirty kilometres southeast of Parkfield and is thought to be associated with high pore-fluid pressures at depth(8). Here we present geophysical evidence of fluids migrating into the creeping section of the San Andreas fault that seem to originate in the region of the uppermost mantle that also stimulates tremor, and evidence that along-strike variations in tremor activity and amplitude are related to strength variations in the lower crust and upper mantle. Interconnected fluids can explain a deep zone of anomalously low electrical resistivity that has been imaged by magnetotelluric data southwest of the Parkfield-Cholame segment. Near Cholame, where fluids seem to be trapped below a high-resistivity cap, tremor concentrates adjacent to the inferred fluids within a mechanically strong zone of high resistivity. By contrast, sub-vertical zones of low resistivity breach the entire crust near the drill hole of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth, northwest of Parkfield, and imply pathways for deep fluids into the eastern fault block, coincident with a mechanically weak crust and the lower tremor amplitudes in the lower crust. Fluid influx to the fault system is consistent with hypotheses of fault-weakening high fluid pressures in the brittle crust. Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10609 SN - 0028-0836 VL - 480 IS - 7375 SP - 87 EP - U248 PB - Nature Publ. Group CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Weber, Michael H. A1 - Abu-Ayyash, Khalil A1 - Abueladas, Abdel-Rahman A1 - Agnon, Amotz A1 - Alasonati-Tašárová, Zuzana A1 - Al-Zubi, Hashim A1 - Babeyko, Andrey A1 - Bartov, Yuval A1 - Bauer, Klaus A1 - Becken, Michael A1 - Bedrosian, Paul A. A1 - Ben-Avraham, Zvi A1 - Bock, Günter A1 - Bohnhoff, Marco A1 - Bribach, Jens A1 - Dulski, Peter A1 - Ebbing, Joerg A1 - El-Kelani, Radwan J. A1 - Foerster, Andrea A1 - Förster, Hans-Jürgen A1 - Frieslander, Uri A1 - Garfunkel, Zvi A1 - Götze, Hans-Jürgen A1 - Haak, Volker A1 - Haberland, Christian A1 - Hassouneh, Mohammed A1 - Helwig, Stefan L. A1 - Hofstetter, Alfons A1 - Hoffmann-Rothe, Arne A1 - Jaeckel, Karl-Heinz A1 - Janssen, Christoph A1 - Jaser, Darweesh A1 - Kesten, Dagmar A1 - Khatib, Mohammed Ghiath A1 - Kind, Rainer A1 - Koch, Olaf A1 - Koulakov, Ivan A1 - Laske, Maria Gabi A1 - Maercklin, Nils T1 - Anatomy of the Dead Sea transform from lithospheric to microscopic scale N2 - Fault zones are the locations where motion of tectonic plates, often associated with earthquakes, is accommodated. Despite a rapid increase in the understanding of faults in the last decades, our knowledge of their geometry, petrophysical properties, and controlling processes remains incomplete. The central questions addressed here in our study of the Dead Sea Transform (DST) in the Middle East are as follows: (1) What are the structure and kinematics of a large fault zone? (2) What controls its structure and kinematics? (3) How does the DST compare to other plate boundary fault zones? The DST has accommodated a total of 105 km of left-lateral transform motion between the African and Arabian plates since early Miocene (similar to 20 Ma). The DST segment between the Dead Sea and the Red Sea, called the Arava/Araba Fault (AF), is studied here using a multidisciplinary and multiscale approach from the mu m to the plate tectonic scale. We observe that under the DST a narrow, subvertical zone cuts through crust and lithosphere. First, from west to east the crustal thickness increases smoothly from 26 to 39 km, and a subhorizontal lower crustal reflector is detected east of the AF. Second, several faults exist in the upper crust in a 40 km wide zone centered on the AF, but none have kilometer-size zones of decreased seismic velocities or zones of high electrical conductivities in the upper crust expected for large damage zones. Third, the AF is the main branch of the DST system, even though it has accommodated only a part (up to 60 km) of the overall 105 km of sinistral plate motion. Fourth, the AF acts as a barrier to fluids to a depth of 4 km, and the lithology changes abruptly across it. Fifth, in the top few hundred meters of the AF a locally transpressional regime is observed in a 100-300 m wide zone of deformed and displaced material, bordered by subparallel faults forming a positive flower structure. Other segments of the AF have a transtensional character with small pull-aparts along them. The damage zones of the individual faults are only 5-20 m wide at this depth range. Sixth, two areas on the AF show mesoscale to microscale faulting and veining in limestone sequences with faulting depths between 2 and 5 km. Seventh, fluids in the AF are carried downward into the fault zone. Only a minor fraction of fluids is derived from ascending hydrothermal fluids. However, we found that on the kilometer scale the AF does not act as an important fluid conduit. Most of these findings are corroborated using thermomechanical modeling where shear deformation in the upper crust is localized in one or two major faults; at larger depth, shear deformation occurs in a 20-40 km wide zone with a mechanically weak decoupling zone extending subvertically through the entire lithosphere. Y1 - 2009 UR - http://www.agu.org/journals/rg/ U6 - https://doi.org/10.1029/2008rg000264 SN - 8755-1209 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Streich, Rita A1 - Becken, Michael A1 - Ritter, Oliver T1 - 2.5D controlled-source EM modeling with general 3D source geometries JF - Geophysics N2 - Most 2.5D controlled-source electromagnetic (CSEM) modeling algorithms presented to date explicitly consider only sources that are point dipoles oriented parallel or perpendicular to the direction of constant conductivity. This makes simulations of complex source geometries expensive, requiring separate evaluations of many point dipole fields, and thus limits the practical applicability of such schemes for simulating and interpreting field data. We present a novel 2.5D CSEM modeling scheme that overcomes this limitation and permits efficient simulations of sources with general shape and orientation by evaluating fields for the entire source at once. We accommodate general sources by using a secondary field approach, in which primary fields are computed for the general source and a 1D background conductivity model. To carry out the required Fourier transforms between space and wavenumber domain using the same fast cosine and sine transform filters as in conventional algorithms, we split the primary and secondary fields into their symmetric and antisymmetric parts. For complex 3D source geometries, this approach is significantly more efficient than previous 2.5D algorithms. Our finite-difference algorithm also includes novel approaches for divergence correction at low frequencies and EM field interpolation across conductivity discontinuities. We describe the modeling scheme and demonstrate its accuracy and efficiency by comparisons of 2.5D-simulated data with 1D and 3D results. Y1 - 2011 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1190/GEO2011-0111.1 SN - 0016-8033 VL - 76 IS - 6 SP - F387 EP - F393 PB - Society of Exploration Geophysicists CY - Tulsa ER -