Anisotropy Effects on Microseismic Event Location

Seismic anisotropy in sedimentary environments is significant—microseismic waveforms often show strong shear-wave splitting, with differences reaching 40% between horizontally and vertically-polarized shear-wave velocities. Failure to account for this anisotropy is shown to result in large microseismic event location errors. A method is presented here for determining the five elastic parameters of a homogeneous, vertical transverse-isotropic (VTI) model from calibration shot data. The method can also use data from mining-induced seismic events, which are then simultaneously located. This simple model provides a good fit to arrival times from coal-environment data, and results in dramatic shifts in interpreted event locations.