Imaging an Underwater Basin and Its Resonance Modes Using Optical Fiber Distributed Acoustic Sensing

Itzhak Lior*, E. Diego Mercerat, Diane Rivet, Anthony Sladen, Jean Paul Ampuero

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is an ideal tool for ambient noise tomography owing to the dense spatial measurements and the ability to continuously record in harsh environments, such as underwater. Although the fine spatial sampling of DAS facilitates the imaging of small-scale lateral velocity heterogeneities, efforts relying on dispersionbased ambient noise tomography are hampered by the underlying premise of negligible lateral variations across the segment used for dispersion curve extraction. To image small-scale structures, this method should be augmented with objective and independent approaches that are not scale limited. Here, we show that power spectral densities (PSDs) and autocorrelations (ACs) of DAS data reveal extremely detailed frequency- dependent resonance and wave propagation characteristics. These observations contain crucial information on lateral and vertical wave propagation. We use these methods to demonstrate the ability to image a complex underwater basin using ambient noise recorded on a fiber deployed offshore Greece. A 2D shear-wave velocity model was derived by analyzing Scholte-wave dispersion. The PSD and AC reveal significant lateral variations across the short 2.5 km long fiber segment, including basin edge effects and scattered waves. These were used to further constrain and modify the velocity model. The modified model is supported by waveform simulations that qualitatively reproduce the PSD and AC observations. Our results demonstrate the advantages of incorporating PSD and AC observations into ambient noise-based imaging. The spatially continuous observation of resonance modes across the basin highlights the benefit of DAS acquisitions for ground-motion estimation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1573-1584
Number of pages12
JournalSeismological Research Letters
Volume93
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2022

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