The spatial footprint of seismic activity and aftershock triggering in a
conceptual model of fluid-induced seismicity
Abstract
Seismic hazard due to fluid invasion in hydraulic fracturing, wastewater
disposal, and enhanced geothermal systems have become a concern for
industry and nearby residents. Some of the challenges associated with
the fluid-induced seismic hazard are the estimation of the spatial
effects of these industry operations as well as the presence or absence
of aftershock triggering. In some cases (e.g. Geysers, California,
Hoadley gas field of Alberta), aftershocks triggering do occur, while in
other cases (e.g. Soultz‐sous‐Forêts, France), this is not the case.
First, to address the spatial effects, using several previously
published high-resolution well-log data, we first show that there is a
tendency that porosity within the basement resembles fractional Gaussian
noise (fGn), while above the basement it resembles fractional Brownian
motion (fBm). Based on this observation, we introduce a novel conceptual
model of the fluid-induced seismicity in disordered porous media by
integrating the notion of fluid diffusion and invasion percolation with
spatially correlated permeability and porosity. We find that our model
does not only capture the observed variations in frequency-magnitude
distribution of seismic events but it also exhibits a much slower decay
in seismic activity at large distances for fBm compared to fGn. Second,
to address the presence of aftershock triggering, we also introduce
nonlinear viscoelastic effects in our model to augment the failure
mechanics. This allows us to test whether the presence or absence of
aftershocks is coupled to the validity of a time scale separation
between fluid dynamics and nonlinear viscoelastic response, for example.
Our findings can be directly incorporated in the seismic hazard
assessment related to fluid injections.