Locating Anthropogenic Seismic Activity at the Redmond Salt Mine

Abstract

We use a nodal seismic network deployed at the Redmond Salt Mine in Utah as a proxy for industrial monitoring to evaluate the efficacy of seismic interferometry for detecting and locating persistent anthropogenic seismic sources. We observe cyclic noise patterns corresponding to mining operations, with distinct stationary and migrating persistent signals. We present an enhanced backprojection location technique to deconvolve source finiteness, better resolving concurrent discrete sources for increased monitoring resolution of anthropogenic activity over time. Our results show that migrating persistent seismic signals consistently focus near lateral blasting areas during evening hours, suggesting they originate from blast preparation activities. In addition, we identify a stationary source near a surface industrial ventilation fan, which likely generates the continuous ground‐coupled airwave observed in our data. Our results further demonstrate the utility of seismic interferometry to monitor continuous, high frequency, anthropogenic seismic sources generated by subsurface industrial facilities.