Feasibility Study of Anisotropic Full-Waveform Inversion with DAS Data in a Vertical Seismic Profile Configuration at the Newell County Facility, Alberta, Canada

Abstract

As an emerging seismic acquisition technology, distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) has drawn significant attention in earth science for long-term and cost-effective monitoring of underground activities. Field seismic experiments with optical fibers in a vertical seismic profile (VSP) configuration were conducted at the Newell County Facility of Carbon Management Canada in Alberta, Canada, for \({\text{CO}}_2\) injection and storage monitoring. Seismic full-waveform inversion (FWI) represents one promising approach for high-resolution imaging of subsurface model properties. In this study, anisotropic FWI with variable density is applied to the DAS-recorded walk-away VSP data for characterizing the subsurface velocity, anisotropy, and density structures, serving as baseline models for future time-lapse studies at the pilot site. Synthetic inversion experiments suggest that, without accounting for anisotropy, the inverted density structures by isotropic FWI are damaged by strong trade-off artifacts. Anisotropic FWI can provide more accurate P-wave velocity, density, and valuable anisotropy models. Field data applications are then performed to validate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed methods. Compared to the inversion outputs of isotropic FWI, the inverted P-wave velocity by anisotropic FWI matches trend variation of the well log more closely. In the inverted density model, the \({\text{CO}}_2\) injection formation can be clearly resolved. The inverted anisotropy parameters provide informative references to interpret the structures and lithology around the target \({\text{CO}}_2\) injection zone.