Groundwater plays a significant role in human production and daily life. Common methods used in groundwater exploration include electrical resistivity, ground-penetrating radar, and seismic methods. Studies have shown that due to the seismoelectric effect, seismic waves generate seismoelectric signals at the interface between the unsaturated zone and the aquifer. This characteristic provides a new approach for detecting aquifers. However, effective methods for utilizing seismoelectric signals for aquifer imaging have been lacking.

To address this issue, Professor Gao Yongxin's team, in collaboration with researchers from Harbin Institute of Technology, Penn State University, and China University of Petroleum (Beijing), proposed a seismoelectric imaging method. The research indicates that the seismoelectric gathers generated by multi-source excitation at common receiver points are similar to seismic explosion reflection gathers (Figure 1). By applying seismic migration to the seismoelectric gathers from the aquifer interface, imaging of the water layer interface can be achieved (Figure 2). The effectiveness of this seismoelectric imaging method was verified through tests on synthetic data from a 2D model and experimental data from a laboratory physical model. This provides a new technique for using seismoelectric signals in groundwater exploration.

This research was published in November 2024 in the prestigious geophysical journal Geophysical Research Letters. PhD student Liu Jiaoyang is the first author, with Professor Gao Yongxin as the corresponding author. Professors Wang Jun from Harbin Institute of Technology and Zhu Tieyuan from Penn State University are joint corresponding authors. The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under project number 42174084.

Link to the original paper:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2024GL112534

(Liu, J., Gao, Y., Wang, J., Zhu, T., Ding, P., Zhou, G., & Li, S. (2024). Seismoelectric imaging of aquifer interface: Theoretical Investigation and laboratory experiments. Geophysical Research Letters, 51, e2024GL112534. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL112534)