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Identification and characterization of growing large-scale en-echelon fractures in a salt mine

  • The spatiotemporal seismicity of acoustic emission (AE) events recorded in the Morsleben salt mine is investigated. Almost a year after backfilling of the cavities from 2003, microevents are distributed with distinctive stripe shapes above cavities at different depth levels. The physical forces driving the creation of these stripes are still unknown. This study aims to find the active stripes and track fracture developments over time by combining two different temporal and spatial clustering techniques into a single methodological approach. Anomalous seismicity parameters values like sharp b-value changes for two active stripes are good indicators to explain possible stress accumulation at the stripe tips. We identify the formation of two new seismicity stripes and show that the AE activities in active clusters are migrated mostly unidirectional to eastward and upward. This indicates that the growth of underlying macrofractures is controlled by the gradient of extensional stress. Studying size distribution characteristic in terms ofThe spatiotemporal seismicity of acoustic emission (AE) events recorded in the Morsleben salt mine is investigated. Almost a year after backfilling of the cavities from 2003, microevents are distributed with distinctive stripe shapes above cavities at different depth levels. The physical forces driving the creation of these stripes are still unknown. This study aims to find the active stripes and track fracture developments over time by combining two different temporal and spatial clustering techniques into a single methodological approach. Anomalous seismicity parameters values like sharp b-value changes for two active stripes are good indicators to explain possible stress accumulation at the stripe tips. We identify the formation of two new seismicity stripes and show that the AE activities in active clusters are migrated mostly unidirectional to eastward and upward. This indicates that the growth of underlying macrofractures is controlled by the gradient of extensional stress. Studying size distribution characteristic in terms of frequency-magnitude distribution and b-value in active phase and phase with constant seismicity rate show that deviations from the Gutenberg-Richter power law can be explained by the inclusion of different activity phases: (1) the inactive period before the formation of macrofractures, which is characterized by a deficit of larger events (higher b-values) and (2) the period of fracture growth characterized by the occurrence of larger events (smaller b-values).show moreshow less

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Author details:Samira Maghsoudi, Sebastian HainzlORCiDGND, Simone CescaORCiD, Torsten DahmORCiDGND, Diethelm Kaiser
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/gji/ggt443
ISSN:0956-540X
ISSN:1365-246X
Title of parent work (English):Geophysical journal international
Publisher:Oxford Univ. Press
Place of publishing:Oxford
Publication type:Article
Language:English
Year of first publication:2014
Publication year:2014
Release date:2017/03/27
Tag:Earthquake source observations; Statistical seismology
Volume:196
Issue:2
Number of pages:14
First page:1092
Last Page:1105
Funding institution:MINE; German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) [BMBF03G0737A]
Organizational units:Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Geowissenschaften
Peer review:Referiert
Institution name at the time of the publication:Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche Fakultät / Institut für Erd- und Umweltwissenschaften
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