Robust Estimation of Temporal Resistivity Variations from Magnetotelluric Data
Abstract
In recent years there has been a worldwide increase of projects related to fluid injection, such as enhanced geothermal systems, CO2 sequestration and/or fracture monitoring studies. For the success of such projects, a full knowledge of the fluid penetration and propagation is needed, making monitoring techniques sensible to the fluid displacement an essential tool. The magnetotelluric (MT) method is a widely used geophysical technique in tectonic and reservoir exploration studies, where its sensitivity to changes in the electrical resistivity of rocks makes it a very promising tool for monitoring application. Several authors have already reported experiments using the MT method to monitor the effects produced by the injection of fluids in the subsurface. Most of them analyze the changes registered in the variables measured at the surface, particularly the apparent resistivity and the impedance phase. However, few studies have tried to estimate the changes in the ground resistivity from the observable data at the surface. The main difficulty in this kind of problems is that a full control of the geo-electric structure is needed a priori, and distortion effects in the measured data can lead to estimate false temporal or spatial variations. In this work we remove distortion in the data by applying a combination of the phase tensor and the quadratic equation, and propose a new technique to estimate ground resistivity variations by applying a 1D inversion scheme, based on a relationship between changes in resistivity at depth to observed changes of rotation invariant MT responses, applying the Marquardt-Levenberg regularization technique. We test the method using synthetic data and then apply it to real MT data sets collected before and after the 2010, Mw 7.2 earthquake in the Mexicali Valley, Mexico. We also apply it to data sets registered continuously by permanent electromagnetic monitoring stations. Keywords: Magnetotellurics, continuous monitoring, regularized inversion, Mexicali Valley.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016AGUFMGP51B1385C
- Keywords:
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- 0599 General or miscellaneous;
- COMPUTATIONAL GEOPHYSICSDE: 0699 General or miscellaneous;
- ELECTROMAGNETICSDE: 0999 General or miscellaneous;
- EXPLORATION GEOPHYSICSDE: 8010 Fractures and faults;
- STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY