Local beamforming and back-projection of induced earthquakes in
Helsinki, southern Finland
Abstract
Seismic array processing is routinely used to infer detailed earthquake
properties of intermediate and large events, however, the source
properties of microseismicity often remain elusive. In this study, we
use high signal-to-noise ratio seismograms of 204 earthquakes induced by
the 6 km deep 2018 Espoo/Helsinki geothermal stimulation to evaluate the
capabilities of beamforming and back-projection array methods. We show
that mini array beamforming is sensitive to medium heterogeneity and
requires calibration to mitigate systematic slowness biases.A combined
and wave back-projection approach significantly improves depth
resolution, reducing offsets to catalogue locations from km to m.
Supported by numerical experiments, we demonstrate that back-projection
swimming patterns can constrain focal mechanisms. Our results imply that
back-projection of data collected over a wide azimuthal range can be
used to monitor and characterize local-scale microseismicity, whereas
beamforming calibration requires independently obtained reference
observations.