Drilling into a fault to capture 3D earthquake behavior

To know what goes wrong during an earthquake, we must keep our eyes on it. A new drilling project brings tools as close as possible to the source of a future earthquake in Taiwan.

Written by Ko Fong Ma, Ph.D., Institute of Earth Sciences, Academia Sinica, National Central University, and Kate Zelzal, science writer

Citation: Ma, K., Zalzal, K. 2022, Drilling in a False to Capture 3D Earthquake Behaviour, Temblor, http://doi.org/10.32858/temblor.257

Along the Ryoko Trench, deep in the eastern coast of Taiwan, the Philippine Sea plate descends northward under the Eurasian plate. The pressure from this tectonic dance gathers along the Meilun Fault, located near the Taiwanese city of Hualien. Along this fault – one of the most active in Taiwan – scientists are working to create an ambitious and comprehensive observatory to monitor the errors in the long term.

The first-of-its-kind project will spread a 3D array of fiber-optic sensors across the subsurface Mellon Fault, with wells drilled on its east and west sides. Scientists hope to capture high-resolution observations of future earthquakes directly from their source. We presented our progress on the project at the annual meeting of the American Seismological Society last month.

The Milun Fault Observatory project is located near the coastal city of Hualien in eastern Taiwan. Credit: Kuo-Fong Ma

Active fault exploration in the aftermath of the earthquake has helped scientists explore some of the toughest questions in seismology, particularly those about how an earthquake started and how much energy is involved. Post-earthquake data, which is what scientists are currently working on, provide an incomplete picture, particularly in terms of how the heat from friction travels throughout the Earth’s interior.

The new project, called Project Milun Fault Drilling and All-lusive Sensing (MiDAS), aims to better capture a real-time 3D image of an earthquake by installing vertical optical fibers with Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and Distributed Temperature Sensing (DTS) capabilities. ) in wells and along the fault surface. The site will also include a vertical seismic array and monitoring of liquids and gases.

MiDAS project members at a drilling site. Credit: Kuo-Fong Ma

Testing hypotheses about wrong behavior

Some earthquakes are thought to be related to the behavior of subsurface fluids. But the models are still hypothetical as there are limited observations along the underground fault surface. The MiDAS team hopes that high-resolution monitoring combined with high-level seismicity in the region will provide a comprehensive picture of what happens before, during and after an earthquake.

With a temperature sensor network, we also hope to be the first to capture the friction heat generated in future earthquakes. This can help us understand where heat goes during a breakdown, how quickly it dissipates and how heat transfer relates to fluid migration—factors that greatly affect seismic energy budgets.

Mellon’s fault is perfect for this job. We believe it is connected below the surface to the nearby Ryoko Subduction Zone – a fault system that has the potential to generate massive earthquakes. Understanding subduction zone systems is a critical task in seismology, but because it is often offshore, obtaining measurements is difficult and expensive. MiDAS, located inland but close to the subduction zone, allows us to create observations more easily. The first stage of drilling, reaching a depth of 700 meters (nearly half a mile) and installation of optical fibers, was successfully completed in December 2021 on the eastern side of the Mellon Fault. A 500-meter (1,600-foot) hole is scheduled to be drilled on the western side in May 2022.

The MiDAS project drilled on the east flank of the Mellon Fault. Credit: Kuo-Fong Ma

We hope that the MiDAS project will help answer these big questions in earthquake research that will eventually improve earthquake risk prediction. We expect to have a lot of data to look through, but our challenge remains to link the behavior of a single fault to the interconnected workings of complex earthquake systems.

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