Source Mechanisms of Earthquakes at the Geysers Geothermal Region Using a Hierarchical Bayesian Approach

Abstract:

The Geysers geothermal region in northern California is a valuable resource for the production of geothermal electric power. Injection of water into the reservoir is necessary to maintain pressure and causes an increase in the number of earthquakes per day, but their source mechanisms are not well understood (Johnson, 2015).

Previous studies of source mechanisms for events in the Geysers have identified a large number of events with significant isotropic and compensated linear vector dipole components. These source complexities most likely arise from the presence of pressurized liquids and gases, as well as temperature changes, at depth. The existence of non-double couple components in volcanic and geothermal environments has been extensively documented by previous studies, but it has also been shown that spurious components might occur due to a range of factors such as an inadequate knowledge of Earth structure and earthquake location, or noisy waveform data. Therefore, it is not entirely surprising that non-double-couple components from different source studies, each following a different experimental method and using different data types, do not agree well (e.g. Guilhem et al., 2014). The assessment of the solution robustness is critical for the physical interpretation of source mechanisms.

Here, we apply a hierarchical Bayesian approach (Mustac and Tkalcic, 2015) to waveform data from M>4.5 events in the Geysers in order to produce moment tensor solutions and simultaneously estimate their robustness. By using a Bayesian inversion, we quantify the uncertainties from an ensemble of probable solutions instead of a single optimized solution and sample solutions at a range of centroid locations. Moreover, the hierarchical approach allows noise in the data to be sampled as a free parameter in the inversion. A rigorous approach in accounting for the data correlated noise covariance matrix prevents “over-interpretation” of noise, thus avoiding erroneous solutions. We interpret our results in the context of accumulated knowledge on the Geysers geothermal region.