A group of scientists using a unique method to study Swiss glaciers uncovered an encouraging discovery that could lead to wide-ranging benefits.
As Seismological Society of America explained (via SciTechDaily), ETH Zürich's Tom Hudson and Andreas Fichtner presented their research at the SSA's Annual Meeting earlier this year, revealing that they installed a fiber optic cable on a Swiss glacier and successfully detected seismic signals produced by the formation of crevasses.
This surprising discovery not only provides a new technique for monitoring seismic activity in treacherous areas but also can potentially be utilized in other fields, such as carbon storage and geothermal energy.
"This is pretty much as close as we can get to a seismic source," Hudson said, per SciTechDaily. "Our crevasse quakes are within 10 meters of the fiber-optic cable, which is quite rare."
Scientists have long dealt with the challenge of utilizing conventional seismic sensors in extreme conditions. Hudson explained that he and his team "got lucky with the conditions during the deployment" of their "dense 2D grid of fiber within a crevasse field on Gornergletscher, the second-largest glacier in Switzerland." The research team positioned the cable as the seasons turned from summer to winter and ensured that it "coupled" with the ground it lay on to provide accurate seismic data. In all, the team detected and located 951 icequakes.
The successful study provides hope that fiber-optic detection can be helpful in "monitoring similar cracks that might open in the rock of a carbon storage reservoir or a geothermal energy system," Hudson said, per SciTechDaily.
"Because ice is a seismically simpler medium than rock, it's got a well-known velocity structure and we can really interrogate the source physics," he said. "So if we can do that in this simpler environment, then the hope is that maybe we can start to think about doing that in a more complex environment."
Glaciers are crucial to our planet's health, but many are melting at an accelerated rate due to Earth's overheating, with most of the heat-trapping pollution contributing to rising global temperatures coming from dirty fuels. This rapid melting is one of the factors in rising sea levels, which can threaten coastal communities and disrupt ecosystems.
While the issue of melting glaciers can only be solved by a concerted effort to reduce the production of planet-warming gases, the use of fiber optics in seismic activity detection can provide another avenue to protect these natural wonders.
"You have some data processing challenges, but you have far more data, and that allows you to basically see the full wavefield in the data itself, which is quite unusual," Hudson said, per SciTechDaily.
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