Imaging medium changes during a hydraulic stimulation using the distortion matrix framework: case of an Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) in Espoo, Finland.

In 2018, the company St1 Oy performed an Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) experiment using near-real-time seismic monitoring as feedback for the pumping procedure and thus allowing the control of the induced seismicity. Between 4 June and 22 July (49 days), ~18,000 cubic meters of water was injected at around 6 km depth beneath the University campus in Otaniemi, Espoo, Finland (Kwiatek el al. 2019). The hydraulic stimulation and post-stimulation stages were monitored by a temporary ~100 three-components geophone network installed by the Institute of Seismology, University of Finland (Hillers et al. 2020). If the requirements for induced seismicity have been successfully met, the medium changes produced by the hydraulic stimulation remain unclear. Especially with regard to the activation or opening of cracks. Recent application of the distortion matrix concept (Badon et al. 2020) in seismology (Touma et al. 2021) allows us to consider resolving some of these questions by imaging the distribution of the scatterers in the medium during the different injection stages. The distortion matrix operator makes it possible to correct a large part of the aberrations present in images obtained by focusing in depth a reflection matrix recorded at the surface. The phase distortions of the seismic wavefield due to complex velocity distributions can be recovered for any virtual source in the medium by comparing the recorded reflection matrix to the ideal geometric wave-front corresponding to this virtual source. By taking advantage of this powerful approach this study present 3D images of the volume surrounding the injection well of the EGS experiment.