资源环境科技发展态势分析平台

One of the challenges associated with subsurface high-pressure fluid injections is the estimation of the seismic hazard and its spatial footprint. Field data have shown that the spatial footprint typically varies significantly between injections into the basement and injections above basement. Here, we show that varying degrees of spatial correlations in porosity or log(permeability) can explain this observation. Using high-resolution well-log data, we first show that porosity within the basement tends to follow a power-law scaling, S(k) ∼ 1/k^β, with β ≈ 0.9, while above basement β > 1.4. Using this in a novel conceptual model, we show that β controls the spatial footprint of fluid-induced seismicity such that large values of β lead to more seismic activity at large distances and a higher variability in the spatio-temporal migration of seismic events, hence, explaining the field observations. Our findings indicate that correlations in log(permeability) need to be incorporated in the seismic hazard assessment.