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
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
,
- Maintenance and update frequency
- notApplicable notApplicable
- GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0
- BGS Thesaurus of Geosciences
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- Hydraulic fracturing
- Induced seismicity
- Shale gas
- dataCentre
- Keywords
-
- NERC_DDC
- Access constraints
- otherRestrictions Other restrictions
- Other constraints
- licenceOGL
- 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
N
S
E
W
- Begin date
- 2016-10-01
- End date
- 2016-11-03
- Unique resource identifier
- WGS 84 (EPSG::4326)
- Distribution format
-
-
MATLAB (MAT)
()
-
MATLAB (MAT)
()
- 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
Overviews
Spatial extent
N
S
E
W
Provided by
Associated resources
Not available
NERC Data Catalogue Service