Field Seismology

Earth Sciences Department

King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals

  

Field Works-Instruments

 

Scope of Course: Main objective of this course is to give students practical  field experience in various aspects of seismology. Students will gain skills in the areas of project design, profile acquisition methods, and the interpretation and reporting of results.  During the course students will also gain some experience in the use of some commercial software for data analysis.
 

In Refraction Seismology, students learn project design and field design for data acquisition. Back from the field to the lab, students will learn about the software they might use for analyzing refraction data to visualize subsurface structure.
 

In Refraction Microtremor, students learn how to acquire noise data in the field and to extract shear wave data to help visualize acoustic features. This section emphasizes that even passive noise can contribute to the exploration of near-surface geological structure.

In Reflection Seismology, provides the students with experience in reflection field survey design and highlights differences between reflection, refraction and microtremor studies. The students will be encouraged to use some of commercials tool from the Software Library of ESD.
 

In Earthquake Seismology, provides the students with experience in field survey to deploy portable seismometer for recording natural and induced earthquakes.

The course has 3 elements: lectures, reading case-history literature, field project based on field trips and data analysis.
                                    

Prerequisites:  Geop204 - Introduction to Seismology

Feedback  

King-Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, P.O.Box:1946, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia, Telephone: (966) (03) 860-1661  Fax : (966)(250) 860-2595

 

Course Topics

There are three sections to the course, described below.                          

Week 1,2

Introduction to Field Seismology

A brief introduction will be given to students on seismic methods of  Reflection,  Refraction  and  Microtremor.

 

Weeks 3, 6

Refraction Seismology

Case Works

 

Field Work

A couple of field trips nearby locality, which depends the number of students.  Students are supposed to propose some areas of their interest.   Location and date of field trip might be decided at the beginning of Refraction Seismology.

Method of Analysis
  •  SeisOptPicker: First Break Picking Module

  • SeisOptŪ @2DTM: Derive subsurface velocity structure from 2D, surface acquired seismic data.

 

Presentation and Report
Field Presentation and report is presented by students.  The quality of report and presentation might be a base for grading.

 

Weeks 7-10

Refraction Microtremor

Case Works

 

Field Work

A couple of field trips nearby locality, which depends the number of students and their interest.  Students will propose some areas of making seismic survey.   Location and date of field trip might be decided at the beginning of Refraction Microtremor.  On the other hand, some of areas under study by private companies might be given a priority to contribute to regions of industry's interest.

Method of Analysis

SeisOptŪ ReMiTM: Derive one-dimensional S-wave velocity from refraction microtremor (noise) recordings using a typical seismograph and standard refraction geophones.

Presentation and Report

 

Weeks 11, 13 
Reflection Seismology

Case Works

 

Field Work

A couple of field trips nearby locality, which depends the number of students.  Students are supposed to propose an area regarding his interest.   Location and date of field trip might be decided at the beginning of episode on Reflection Seismology.  Course instructor also might make a contact  to get ARAMCO to let  class observe some of their seismic reflection surveys.

Method of Analysis

Presentation and Report

 

Weeks 14, 15 
 Earthquake Seismology

Case Works

Field Work

Students will make a couple of experiments for recording global earthquakes nearby area after learning to deploy seismometer.  Following experiment on recording of global earthquake, they will deploy seismometer in the areas of mining and oil-field to record and analyze man-made earthquakes.

Method of Analysis
IRIS's software

Presentation and Report