Seismic interferometry of railroad induced ground motions: body and surface wave imaging

S U M M A R Y Seismic interferometry applied to 120 hr of railroad traffic recorded by an array of vertical component seismographs along a railway within the Rio Grande rift has recovered surface and body waves characteristic of the geology beneath the railway. Linear and hyperbolic arrivals are retrieved that agree with surface (Rayleigh), direct and reflected P waves observed by nearby conventional seismic surveys. Train-generated Rayleigh waves span a range of frequencies significantly higher than those recovered from typical ambient noise interferometry studies. Direct P-wave arrivals have apparent velocities appropriate for the shallow geology of the survey area. Significant reflected P-wave energy is also present at relatively large offsets. A common midpoint stack produces a reflection image consistent with nearby conventional reflection data. We suggest that for sources at the free surface (e.g. trains) increasing the aperture of the array to record wide angle reflections, in addition to longer recording intervals, might allow the recovery of deeper geological structure from railroad traffic. Frequency– wavenumber analyses of these recordings indicate that the train source is symmetrical (i.e. approaching and receding) and that deeper refracted energy is present although not evident in the time-offset domain. These results confirm that train-generated vibrations represent a practical source of high-resolution subsurface information, with particular relevance to geotechnical and environmental applications.

[1]  Fukao,et al.  Resonant oscillations between the solid earth and the atmosphere , 2000, Science.

[2]  David Halliday,et al.  Seismic surface waves in a suburban environment : Active and passive interferometric methods , 2008 .

[3]  Andrey Bakulin,et al.  Virtual Source: New Method For Imaging And 4D Below Complex Overburden , 2004 .

[4]  Fabiana Rios Poletto,et al.  Seismic While Drilling: Fundamentals of Drill-Bit Seismic for Exploration , 2004 .

[5]  Michel Campillo,et al.  3‐D surface wave tomography of the Piton de la Fournaise volcano using seismic noise correlations , 2007 .

[6]  K. Wapenaar,et al.  Green's function representations for seismic interferometry , 2006 .

[7]  Jin Soo Shin,et al.  Surface‐wave tomography from ambient seismic noise of accelerograph networks in southern Korea , 2006 .

[8]  R. Weaver,et al.  On the emergence of the Green's function in the correlations of a diffuse field: pulse-echo using thermal phonons. , 2001, Ultrasonics.

[9]  S. Webb,et al.  The Earth's hum: the excitation of Earth normal modes by ocean waves , 2008 .

[10]  Klaus Hasselmann,et al.  A statistical analysis of the generation of microseisms , 1963 .

[11]  Öz Yilmaz,et al.  Society of Exploration Geophysicists video course : seismic data processing , 1990 .

[12]  S. K. Runcorn,et al.  Interpretation theory in applied geophysics , 1965 .

[13]  N. Nakata,et al.  Shear wave imaging from traffic noise using seismic interferometry by cross-coherence , 2011 .

[14]  S. Smithson,et al.  Heat flow and gravity interpretation across the Rio Grande Rift in southern New Mexico and west Texas , 1975 .

[15]  Barbara Romanowicz,et al.  The one-bit noise correlation: a theory based on the concepts of coherent and incoherent noise , 2011 .

[16]  Roel Snieder,et al.  Application of seismic interferometry to extract P- and S-wave propagation and observation of shear-wave splitting from noise data at Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada , 2008 .

[17]  Roel Snieder,et al.  Love waves from local traffic noise interferometry , 2013 .

[18]  A. Sanford,et al.  Microearthquake crustal reflections, Socorro, New Mexico , 1965 .

[19]  S. Webb.  The Earth’s ‘hum’ is driven by ocean waves over the continental shelves , 2007, Nature.

[20]  Roel Snieder,et al.  Underestimation of body waves and feasibility of surface-wave reconstruction by seismic interferometry , 2010 .

[21]  M. Longuet-Higgins.  A theory of the origin of microseisms , 1950, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

[22]  R. Snieder.  Extracting the Green's function from the correlation of coda waves: a derivation based on stationary phase. , 2004, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[23]  S. Smithson,et al.  Gridded fault patterns in a late Cenozoic and a Paleozoic continental rift , 1975 .

[24]  A. Sanford,et al.  A new map of the geographic extent of the Socorro mid-crustal magma body , 1997, Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America.

[25]  Matthias Ohrnberger,et al.  Surface-wave inversion using a direct search algorithm and its application to ambient vibration measurements , 2004 .

[26]  Richard T. Lacoss,et al.  Microseisms: Mode Structure and Sources , 1968, Science.

[27]  Zhongwen Zhan,et al.  Retrieval of Moho‐reflected shear wave arrivals from ambient seismic noise , 2010 .

[28]  Keith D. Koper,et al.  On the Composition of Earth's Short-Period Seismic Noise Field , 2010 .

[29]  J. Rector,et al.  The use of drill‐bit energy as a downhole seismic source , 1991 .

[30]  Kees Wapenaar,et al.  Synthesis of an inhomogeneous medium from its acoustic transmission response , 2003 .

[31]  Roel Snieder,et al.  Coda Wave Interferometry for Estimating Nonlinear Behavior in Seismic Velocity , 2002, Science.

[32]  Kees Wapenaar,et al.  Seismic Interferometry – Reconstruction of the Earth’s Reflection Response , 2006 .

[33]  R. Weaver,et al.  Ultrasonics without a source: thermal fluctuation correlations at MHz frequencies. , 2001, Physical review letters.

[34]  F. Cotton,et al.  The nature of noise wavefield and its applications for site effects studies A literature review , 2006 .

[35]  Fabrice Ardhuin,et al.  How ocean waves rock the Earth: Two mechanisms explain microseisms with periods 3 to 300 s , 2015 .

[36]  T. Matsuoka,et al.  Application of Seismic Interferometry to Subsurface Imaging (2) , 2006 .

[37]  Jean-Paul Montagner,et al.  Global Surface Wave Tomography Using Seismic Hum , 2008, Science.

[38]  Gerard T. Schuster,et al.  Theory of Daylight/Interferometric Imaging - Tutorial , 2001 .

[39]  Anatoli L. Levshin,et al.  Ambient noise Rayleigh wave tomography across Europe , 2007 .

[40]  J. Trampert,et al.  Approximations in seismic interferometry and their effects on surface waves , 2010 .

[41]  P. Gerstoft,et al.  A unified theory of microseisms and hum , 2013 .

[42]  Michel Campillo,et al.  High-Resolution Surface-Wave Tomography from Ambient Seismic Noise , 2005, Science.

[43]  Zhongwen Zhan,et al.  Extracting seismic core phases with array interferometry , 2013 .

[44]  Maarten V. de Hoop,et al.  Surface-wave array tomography in SE Tibet from ambient seismic noise and two-station analysis: I - Phase velocity maps , 2006 .

[45]  G. Ekström.  Time domain analysis of Earth's long‐period background seismic radiation , 2001 .

[46]  Kees Wapenaar,et al.  High-resolution lithospheric imaging with seismic interferometry , 2010 .

[47]  Remko Scharroo,et al.  Generic Mapping Tools: Improved Version Released , 2013 .

[48]  R. Snieder,et al.  Retrieval of local surface wave velocities from traffic noise – an example from the La Barge basin (Wyoming) , 2014 .

[49]  Fred Aminzadeh,et al.  Constant normal‐moveout (CNMO) correction: a technique and test results , 2000 .

[50]  Kees Wapenaar,et al.  Reflection images from ambient seismic noise , 2009 .

[51]  J. Sheng,et al.  Interferometric/daylight seismic imaging , 2004 .

[52]  Dylan Mikesell,et al.  The virtual refraction: Useful spurious energy in seismic interferometry , 2008 .

[53]  J. Harvey,et al.  Time–distance helioseismology , 1993, Nature.

[54]  K. Wapenaar,et al.  Extraction of P-wave reflections from microseisms , 2011 .

[55]  Body wave observations from cross‐correlations of ambient seismic noise: A case study from the Karoo, RSA , 2011 .

[56]  Ulrich Schmucker,et al.  Anomalies of geomagnetic variations in the Southwestern United States , 1970 .

[57]  J. Oliver,et al.  Cocorp Seismic Reflection Studies of the Rio Grande Rift , 2013 .

[58]  Marc Wathelet,et al.  An improved neighborhood algorithm: Parameter conditions and dynamic scaling , 2008 .

[59]  Jon F. Claerbout,et al.  Synthesis of a layered medium from its acoustic transmission response , 1968 .

[60]  Michel Campillo,et al.  Emergence of body waves from cross-correlation of short period seismic noise , 2012 .

[61]  Yingjie Yang,et al.  Processing seismic ambient noise data to obtain reliable broad-band surface wave dispersion measurements , 2007 .

[62]  Robert W. Clayton,et al.  High-resolution 3D shallow crustal structure in Long Beach, California: Application of ambient noise tomography on a dense seismic array , 2013 .

[63]  Kees Wapenaar,et al.  Retrieval of reflections from seismic background‐noise measurements , 2007 .

[64]  E. Baskir,et al.  Sourceless reflection seismic exploration , 1975 .

[65]  David Halliday,et al.  Seismic interferometry, surface waves and source distribution , 2008 .

[66]  K. Wapenaar.  Retrieving the elastodynamic Green's function of an arbitrary inhomogeneous medium by cross correlation. , 2004, Physical review letters.

[67]  L. R. Russell,et al.  Structure and tectonics of the Albuquerque Basin segment of the Rio Grande rift: Insights from reflection seismic data , 1994 .

[68]  C. Cahn,et al.  On the sampling the zeros of bandwidth limited signals , 1958, IRE Trans. Inf. Theory.

[69]  W. Munk,et al.  Comparative spectra of microseisms and swell , 1963 .

[70]  Peter Gerstoft,et al.  P‐waves from cross‐correlation of seismic noise , 2005 .

[71]  Toshiro Tanimoto,et al.  Continuous Free Oscillations: Atmosphere-Solid Earth Coupling , 2001 .