From August 2016 to July 2017, a passive seismic survey was conducted in South Western Iran as a part of a pilot project aimed to improve the imaging in geologically complex areas. Passive seismic methods have shown to be a useful tool to infer the physical properties of the underground geological structures where traditional hydrocarbon exploration methods are challenging. For this purpose, a dense passive seismic network consisting of 119 three‐component borehole seismic stations was deployed over an area of 400 km2 around the city of Dehdasht. This paper focuses on the details of the network design, which was devoted to high‐resolution seismological applications, including local earthquake tomography and seismic attenuation imaging. In this regard, we describe the instrument types and the station installation procedures used to obtain high‐quality data that were used to retrieve three‐dimensional models of P‐ and S‐wave velocity and P‐wave attenuation in the area using tomographic inversion techniques. We also assess the network performance in terms of the seismic ambient noise levels recorded at each station site, and we revise the horizontal orientation of the sensors using surface waves from teleseismic earthquakes.

Summary Recent developments in sensor technology have allowed for the low-cost deployment of dense seismic arrays which continuously record the seismic ambient noise field. Generally, the extraction of body waves from the seismic ambient noise field is more challenging than for surface waves, due to the dominant amplitude of the latter. In this study, we work with data from a dense seismic array deployment in the Dehdasht area, southwestern Iran. We show that by using the polarization properties of seismic waves, we can simultaneously retrieve both high frequency body waves and surface waves from the cross-correlated noise field. As a by-product of this study, we also observe high energy spurious artefacts, particularly those associated with the direct P-phases. Numerical simulations show that these artefacts are a consequence of an uneven distribution of noise sources, and are difficult to suppress during the simultaneous retrieval of body and surface waves.

Summary The strong attenuation of the thick sedimentary layers in the Dehdasht region, Iran, renders active seismic exploration surveys difficult. The imaging of the existent limestone reservoirs is limited to the shallow subsurface due to the strong attenuation of seismic waves. Here, we discuss a different approach to imaging the subsurface using body waves extracted from the cross-correlation of the seismic ambient wave-field. We discuss the technical challenges to extracting clear P- wave arrivals from the seismic ambient wave-field of a dense 3-component seismic array deployed in the Dehdasht basin. We invert the data for the 3D P- wave velocity structure and compare the velocity model with results from the 2D active seismic surveys in the area. The results show the potential of using body waves extracted from the seismic ambient wave-field for imaging purposes in highly attenuating areas.

<p>We simultaneously extract both, direct P-waves and Rayleigh waves, from the seismic ambient noise field recorded by a dense seismic network in Iran. With synthetics, we show that the simultaneous retrieval of body and surface waves from seismic ambient noise leads to the unavoidable appearance of spurious arrivals that could lead to misinterpretations.</p><p>We work with 2 months of seismic ambient noise records from a dense deployment of 119 sensors with interstation distances of 2 km in Iran. To retrieve body and surface waves, we calculate the cross-coherency in low-frequency ranges, i.e. frequencies up to 1.2 Hz, to provide the empirical Green’s functions between each pair of stations. To separate the P and Rayleigh waves, we use the polarization method that also enhances the small amplitude body waves.</p><p>We observe both P and Rayleigh waves with an apparent velocity of 4.9±0.3 and 1.8±0.1 km/s in the studied area, respectively, as well as S or higher mode of Rayleigh waves, with an apparent velocity of 4.1±0.1 km/s. Besides these physical arrivals, we also observe two spurious arrivals with similar amplitudes before/after the P and/or Rayleigh waves that render the discrimination challenging.</p><p>To better understanding these arrivals, we perform synthetic tests. We show that simultaneously retrieving the body and surface waves from seismic ambient noise sources will unavoidably lead to the appearance of superior arrivals in the calculation of empirical Green’s functions.</p>