Studying rivers through fluvial seismology

Danica Roth

droth@mines.edu

Jin Ge

gjin@mines.edu

Many active Earth surface processes, such as landslides or sediment transport in flooding rivers can be challenging, costly and potentially dangerous to monitor. But rivers, landslides and even gophers moving soil on hills (“bioturbation”) all transfer energy to the ground in the form of elastic or seismic waves. Traditionally considered “noise” by earthquake seismologists, these seismic signals contain valuable information about the processes that generated them and the ground through which they travel. By decoding these signals, we can use this information to characterize and study these processes. This MURF project will take advantage of existing broadband seismic data recorded near rivers in Switzerland or Taiwan, or distributed acoustic sensor (DAS) data recently collected in Golden, CO, and allows for several research options depending on student interests. Possible options include but are not limited to: using ambient noise to i) characterize seismic wave attenuation properties in river beds and other geomorphically active field settings and over individual sediment transport or mass movement events to assess site evolution, or ii) to identify the specific sources of seismic signals (e.g., waterfalls, landslides, etc.), iii) characterizing the signals of water turbulence and sediment transport, and iv) connecting seismic spectral characteristics to channel geometry and turbulent flow characteristics.

The student(s) will be co-advised by Danica Roth (fluvial geomorphology and fluvial seismology expertise) and Jin Ge (seismology and ambient noise expertise).

Grand Challenge: Engineer the tools of scientific discovery

Roth, D. L., Finnegan, N. J., Brodsky, E. E., Cook, K. L., Stark, C. P., & Wang, H. W. (2014). Migration of a coarse fluvial sediment pulse detected by hysteresis in bedload generated seismic waves. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 404, 144-153. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2014.07.019 Roth, D. L., Brodsky, E. E., Finnegan, N. J., Rickenmann, D., Turowski, J. M., & Badoux, A. (2016). Bed load sediment transport inferred from seismic signals near a river. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 121(4), 725-747. https://doi.org/10.1002/2015JF003782 Roth, D. L., Finnegan, N. J., Brodsky, E. E., Rickenmann, D., Turowski, J. M., Badoux, A., & Gimbert, F. (2017). Bed load transport and boundary roughness changes as competing causes of hysteresis in the relationship between river discharge and seismic amplitude recorded near a steep mountain stream. Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, 122(5), 1182-1200. https://doi.org/10.1002/2016JF004062

Danica Roth, droth@mines.edu (fluvial geomorphology and fluvial seismology expertise) and Jin Ge, gjin@mines.edu (seismology and ambient noise expertise).