Local seismicity recorded at the geothermal field of Los Humeros (Mexico)

Extensive passive seismic monitoring was carried out between Sep. 17 and Sep. 18 over the exploited geothermal field of Los Humeros (Mexico). This acquisition operation was conducted in the frame of the European H2020 project GEMex among other geophysical campaigns, but also geochemical and geological surveys. Seismic monitoring provided numerous data, whose processing is still on-going, to better characterize the underground structures and properties of the geothermal field. These results participate to the increase of our understanding of the local geothermal system. They can be utilized to propose new development areas, especially, in the northern part of the currently exploited zone, which shows T > 380°C at ca. 2 km depth.
For one year, a network of 45 short- and long-period seismometers was deployed in the surrounding of the Los Humeros geothermal field. The network layout was chosen to comply with several types of passive seismic processing methods: induced and natural seismicity characterization, travel-time tomography, ambient noise tomography, etc.
We present here the results associated with the recorded seismicity. Besides several natural earthquakes in the region, local earthquakes were regularly detected, leading to an original database of about 500 events. ... mehrMost of them were clustered around specific well doublets, at a depth between 1 and 3.5 km, consistent with the reservoir interval.