Distributed sensing of microseisms and teleseisms with submarine dark fibers

Sparse seismic instrumentation in the oceans limits our understanding of deep Earth dynamics and submarine earthquakes. Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), an emerging technology that converts optical fiber to seismic sensors, allows us to leverage pre-existing submarine telecommunication cables for seismic monitoring. Here we report observations of microseism, local surface gravity waves, and a teleseismic earthquake along a 4192-sensor ocean-bottom DAS array offshore Belgium. We observe in-situ how opposing groups of ocean surface gravity waves generate double-frequency seismic Scholte waves, as described by the Longuet-Higgins theory of microseism generation. We also extract P- and S-wave phases from the…

• NS
  National Science Foundation

  Awards: 1848166, CAREER
• CI
  California Institute of Technology
• JP
  Joint Programming Initiative Water challenges for a changing world
• MD
  Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades

  Awards: RTI2018-097957-B-C31, FJCI-2016-27881, IJCI-2017-33856, TEC2015-71127-C2-2-R, RTI2018
• MD
  Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación

  Awards: TEC2015-71127-C2-2-R, RTI2018-097957-B-C31, IJCI-2017-33856, FJCI-2016-27881