Monitoring of velocity changes based on seismic ambient noise: A brief review and perspective

Over the past two decades, the development of the ambient noise cross-correlation technology has spawned the exploration of underground structures. In addition, ambient noise-based monitoring has emerged because of the feasibility of reconstructing the continuous Green’s functions. Investigating the physical properties of a subsurface medium by tracking changes in seismic wave velocity that do not depend on the occurrence of earthquakes or the continuity of artificial sources dramatically increases the possibility of researching the evolution of crustal deformation. In this article, we outline some state-of-the-art techniques for noise-based monitoring, including moving-window cross-spectral analysis, the stretching method, dynamic time wrapping, wavelet cross-spectrum analysis, and a combination of these measurement methods, with either a Bayesian least-squares inversion or the Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo method. We briefly state the principles underlying the different methods and their pros and cons. By elaborating on some typical noise-based monitoring applications, we show how this technique can be widely applied in different scenarios and adapted to multiples scales. We list classical applications, such as following earthquake-related co- and postseismic velocity changes, forecasting volcanic eruptions, and tracking external environmental forcing-generated transient changes. By monitoring cases having different targets at different scales, we point out the applicability of this technology for disaster prediction and early warning of small-scale reservoirs, landslides, and so forth. Finally, we conclude with some possible developments of noise-based monitoring at present and summarize some prospective research directions. To improve the temporal and spatial resolution of passive-source noise monitoring, we propose integrating different methods and seismic sources. Further interdisciplinary collaboration is indispensable for comprehensively interpreting the observed changes.