Traffic-induced surface waves can be used in near-surface imaging

Accurate understanding of near-surface structures of the solid earth is challenging, especially in urban areas where active source seismic surveys are constrained and difficult to perform. The analysis of anthropogenic seismic noise provides an alternative way to image the shallow subsurface in urban environments. Mi et al. (2022) present a case study of using traffic noise with seismic interferometry to investigate near-surface structures in the urban area of Hangzhou, China. One hour noise recordings with linear arrays along roads are utilized to retrieve surface waves, and results demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of using traffic-induced surface waves to image and monitor the shallow subsurface in urban areas.

Figure 1. Virtual shot gathers generated from traffic-induced noise with different observation time.

This work has been done by Prof. Jianghai Xia’s group and published in Geophysics (One of the best journal in applied geophysics). The first author Binbin Mi is an associate researcher. This study is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 41830103), the China Geological Survey (grant no. DD20190281), and Hubei Subsurface Multi-scale Imaging Key Laboratory, China University of Geosciences in Wuhan (grant no. SMIL-2019-02).

For more details:

Mi, B., Xia, J., Tian, G., Shi, Z., Xing, H., Chang, X., Xi, C., Liu, Y., Ning, L., Dai, T., Pang, J., Chen, X., Zhou, C., Zhang, H., 2022. Near-surface imaging from traffic-induced surface waves with dense linear arrays: An application in the urban area of Hangzhou, China. GEOPHYSICS 87, B145–B158.https://doi.org/10.1190/geo2021-0184.1