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Rupture directivity analysis data of hydraulic fracturing-induced seismic events in a shale gas field near Fox Creek, Alberta, Canada

This data repository contains the raw waveforms of seven hydraulic fracturing-induced seismic events, together with their rupture directivity analysis. The entire data is consolidated in one .mat file per seismic event (which can be read with Matlab and Octave). A detailed description of the .mat files, and a Matlab script to import and visualise the seismic data and rupture directivity analysis of each event, is also included in this repository. The passive seismic dataset was collected in a shale gas field near Fox Creek, Alberta, Canada, during a multi-stage hydraulic fracturing stimulation that induced shallow earthquakes (less than 5 km deep) of magnitudes up to 3.2. This area has experienced in recent years multiple cases on induced seismicity associated with oil and gas operations, including hydraulic fracturing and wastewater disposal, of magnitudes above 4.0 in some cases. The full passive seismic dataset was collected between October and November 2016 and made open source through a GitHub repository (https://github.com/ToC2ME). To determine the rupture directivity of each induced seismic event, we use the Empirical Green's Functions (EGF) method to first obtain apparent source time functions (ASTF), and then measure the rupture time at each seismic station. We then invert the rupture directivity of each seismic event based on the azimuthal variation of the measured rupture times at each seismic station. Observations of rupture directivity (the direction of propagation of the earthquake rupture) can provide important information as to the nature of the interactions between injection-induced pressure increases and earthquake nucleation. Measurement of rupture directivity could therefore have important implications for induced seismicity hazard management. The rupture directivity analysis of these hydraulic fracturing-induced seismic events was led and coordinated by Dr. James Verdon and Dr. Germán Rodríguez at the School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol.

Simple

Date (Creation)
2026-01-29
Identifier
http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13608620
Originator
  University of Bristol - Dr J P Verdon ( Lecturer in Applied Geophysics, School of Earth Sciences )
Wills Memorial Building, Queens Road, Clifton , Bristol , BS8 1RJ ,
Originator
  University of Bristol - Germán Rodríguez
Originator
  NORSAR - Joanna Holmgren
Distributor
  British Geological Survey - Enquiries
United Kingdom
Point of contact
  British Geological Survey - Enquiries
United Kingdom
Maintenance and update frequency
notApplicable notApplicable
GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
  • Geology
BGS Thesaurus of Geosciences
  • Hydraulic fracturing
  • Induced seismicity
  • Shale gas
dataCentre
  • NGDC Deposited Data
  • Citable Data
Keywords
  • NERC_DDC
Access constraints
otherRestrictions Other restrictions
Other constraints
licenceOGL
Other constraints
Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]"
Use constraints
otherRestrictions Other restrictions
Other constraints
The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.
Other constraints
Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]"
Spatial representation type
grid Grid
Metadata language
EnglishEnglish
Topic category
  • Geoscientific information
Geographic identifier
ALBERTA [id=744300]

Date (Creation)
1979

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Begin date
2016-10-01
End date
2016-11-03
Unique resource identifier
WGS 84 (EPSG::4326)
Distribution format
  • MATLAB (MAT) ()

Distributor
  British Geological Survey - Enquiries
United Kingdom
OnLine resource
Data ( WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download )
OnLine resource
Citation Information - Digital Object Identifier (DOI) ( WWW:LINK-1.0-http--related )

Rodríguez-Pradilla, G., Holmgren, J., Verdon, J. (2026). Rupture directivity analysis data of hydraulic fracturing-induced seismic events in a shale gas field near Fox Creek, Alberta, Canada. NERC EDS National Geoscience Data Centre. (Dataset). https://doi.org/10.5285/9b280744-4af3-471d-8baa-8bfe2b2d08b3

Hierarchy level
dataset Dataset
Other
dataset

Conformance result

Date (Publication)
2011
Explanation
See the referenced specification
Pass
No

Conformance result

Date (Publication)
2010-12-08
Explanation
See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:323:0011:0102:EN:PDF
Pass
No
Statement
The script RupDirAnalysis_AllEvents.m (last tested in Matlab R2024b) automatically imports all .mat files and generates two figures per seismic event; the first one with the raw seismic traces and picked P- and S-wave arrivals, and the second one with the ASTFs obtained for each component of each seismic station (one vertical and two horizontal components), the stacked ASTF per station (either from all three components, or only from the horizontal components), and the measured rupture time at each station. Similar figures from the same seismic events are shown in Rodríguez-Pradilla et al (2026). Finally, to plot the raw seismic traces of each event we use wiggle.m, which is part of the Matlab and Octave-based SegyMAT library (open source; https://segymat.sourceforge.net/).
File identifier
49eaf0b9-d8b0-e5ea-e063-3050940a3c9f XML
Metadata language
EnglishEnglish
Hierarchy level
dataset Dataset
Date stamp
2026-05-06
Metadata standard name
UK GEMINI
Metadata standard version
2.3
Point of contact
  British Geological Survey
Environmental Science Centre,Keyworth , NOTTINGHAM , NOTTINGHAMSHIRE , NG12 5GG , United Kingdom
+44 115 936 3100
Dataset URI
http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13608620
 
 

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