Project summary

Knowledge of the structural details of Earth’s interior, their temporal changes, as well as their effects on ground motions after earthquakes is one of the grand challenges of Earth sciences with implications for sustained energy (exploration, monitoring geothermal energy), natural risks (volcano seismology, earthquake shaking hazard), and climate change (CO₂-sequestration). We intend to build on recent progress in the parallel simulation of 3-D seismic wave propagation on hexahedral and tetrahedral grids to develop integrated and scalable approaches to recover Earth’s structure from the complete recorded waveforms at the Earth’s surface by seismic networks with ever increasing station densities. The goal is to go beyond ray-based approaches to the seismic inverse problem and make use of the vast amount of information contained in seismic waveforms. We tightly link this project to the developing observational infrastructure in Europe (EU-funded NERIES initiative) and aim at the first highresolution 3-D wave simulations for earthquakes in Europe with the long-term goal to perform full-wave tomography for the European Continent. The technical challenges will include the optimisation and scalability of forward and inverse modelling schemes and the visualization and processing of simulation results during and/or after runtime. The methodology will in principle be applicable to other spatial scales (near surface structures, reservoirs, volcanoes, or whole planets).

KONWIHR funding

• KONWIHR funding of GeoPF: 9/2008 – 8/2013

Contact:

• Prof. Dr. Heiner Igel, Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Project staff:

• Andreas Fichtner, Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• Dr. Martin Käser, Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• Kai Redeker, Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• Matthias Meschede, Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
• Verena Hermann, Department für Geo- und Umweltwissenschaften, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Publications and presentations

• H. Igel, M. Käser, M. Stupazzini: Simulation of Seismic Wave Propagation in Media with Complex Geometries, Springer Verlag (Ed: W.H.K. Lee), Springer, (2009). Publisher