Using shear-wave resonances recorded by subsea fiber-optic cables to image shallow sediments

What is it about?

We use the wave frequencies of the shear-wave (S-wave) resonances measured by subsea fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) to build the S-wave velocity model of the subsea near-surface low-velocity sediments overlying a hard-rock basement in offshore Svalbard, Norway. The computed S-wave velocity models exhibit the variation of the elastic properties of the underlying near-surface sediments along the fiber-optic cables. This variation agrees with a previous study, and verifies the distribution of deposited sediments and landforms in offshore Svalbard.

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Photo by Vince Gx on Unsplash

Photo by Vince Gx on Unsplash

Why is it important?

We show that subsea fiber-optic DAS can passively measure S-wave resonances occurring in near-surface low-velocity sediments. We present another alternative method to estimate the S-wave velocity model of the sediments using such resonance phenomena. Our findings show that DAS technology can be used to characterize the near-surface low-velocity sediments in marine environment.