Shear wave reflection seismic surveying in the Trondheim harbour area - imaging of land slide processes

The harbour area of Trondheim, Norway, was build on man-made land fillings at the coast of the Trondheim Fjord in several expansions since the last 80 years. The whole area is located on the deltaic sediments of the river Nidelven, which are overlying marine sediments that reach the bed rock in nearly 150 m depth. Some submarine land slides at the border of the sediment body nearby the harbour area were reported during the last decades. Therefore, many geological and geophysical investigations were carried out in recent years to explore the structure of the sediment body and its stability onshore and offshore in detail. Whereas high-resolution marine seismic methods archieved excellent results in the offshore area, common seismic investigations for the mostly paved harbour area itself were a difficult challenge. Therefore, SH polarized shear wave reflection seismics using a land streamer combined with a newly developed shear wave vibrator buggy of 30 kN peak force was applied, because this method is advantageous for paved surfaces. Overall 4.2 km 2.5D profiling was carried out in the harbour area along roads and parking places after optimizing of the field procedure. The whole operation was done at night in time slots from midnight to 5 am by road closures due to savety reasons and to minimize the noise from surrounding heavy traffic of trains, trucks and other heavy equipment. The field measurements achieved high resolution results of the sediment body structure, clear detection of the bedrock, and probably deeper structures within the bedrock. Due to the clear and continuous reflection events, also the shear wave velocity could be calculated at least down to the bedrock to indicate the stiffness of the sediment layers. The results of these onshore seismic profiles will be integrated in a combined onshore-offshore seismic profile grid for structural interpretation. Furthermore, the derived shear wave velocities will be combined with cone penetrometer testings and borehole results to get a comprehensive database about the geotechnical parameters of the sediment body.