<p>The GEMex<sup>*</sup> project is a recently finalized European-Mexican collaboration that aimed to improve the understanding of two geothermal fields: Acoculco and Los Humeros Volcanic Complex . These sites are located in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, a region that hosts numerous active volcanoes and is favorable for geothermal exploitation. Currently, the &#160;Los Humeros Volcanic Complex is one of Mexico&#8217;s main geothermal systems with an installed capacity of ~95MW. Many studies have been performed at this site since the 70s highlighting several features and characteristics of the shallow subsurface. However a thorough knowledge of structures and behavior of the system at greater depths is still quite sparse. Hence one main objective of the GEMex project was to conduct several geological, geochemical, and geophysical experiments to investigate deeper structures for future development of local and regional geothermal resources.</p><p>In this framework, for the period of one year (September 2017 to September 2018), a seismic array consisting of 45 seismic stations was set to record continuously at the Los Humeros Volcanic Complex. In this study we analyzed the continuous seismic records to detect the micro-seismicity mainly related to exploitation activities. After applying a recursive STA/LTA detection algorithm, we assembled and manually picked P- and S- phases of a catalog of about 500 local events. The detected events were mostly clustered around injection wells, with fewer events located close to known structures. We use the retrieved catalog to derive a new minimum 1D velocity model for the Los Humeros site. We then performed a joint inversion to obtain the 3D Vp and Vp/Vs structures of the geothermal field. A post-processing averaging of several inversions was also computed to increase resolution of the investigated region. In this study we will show the derived Vp and Vp/Vs models for the &#160;Los Humeros Volcanic Complex to emphasize various underground structures and potentially identify possible variations due to changes in temperature, fluid content, and rock porosity.</p><p>&#160;</p><p>*This project has received funding from the European Union&#8217;s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 727550 and the Mexican Energy Sustainability Fund CONACYT-SENER, project 2015-04-68074. We thank the Comisi&#243;n Federal de Electricidad (CFE) for kindly granting the access to the geothermal field for installation and maintenance of seismic stations.</p>
<p>Joint inversion of surfaces and teleseismic converted waves is commonly used to retrieve seismic structures beneath a seismic station. Currently, this approach is routinely applied at global and regional scale to probe the structures of the mantle and the lower-crust. However, the difficulty to retrieve reliable converted waves at high frequencies (> 1 Hz) makes challenging to apply this technique to resolve structures at shallow depths (<20 km).&#160;Here we explore the feasibility of using a trans-dimensional Bayesian scheme based on a reversible jump Markov Chains Monte Carlo method, to resolve shallow structure at local scale. We use phase and group velocity dispersion curves for Love and Rayleigh waves, from 0.5 to 10 s and tele-seismic converted waves in a distance range from 30<sup>o</sup> to 95<sup>o</sup>. We explore the ability of different approaches to retrieve high frequency converted phases that will be used in the framework of the Bayesian inversion. We present preliminary tests of the reliability of the method and applications to experimental data collected in the super-hot geothermal field of Los Humeros, M&#233;xico. This work is performed in the framework of the Mexican European consortium GeMex (Cooperation in Geothermal energy research Europe-Mexico, PT5.2 N: 267084 funded by CONACyT-SENER: S0019, 2015-04, and Horizon 2020, grant agreement No. 727550).</p>
<p>In the framework of the GEMEX project (cooperation between Europe and Mexico for geothermal development), a dense network of 45 stations was deployed in 2017-2018 in the Los Humeros caldera, Mexico.</p><p>Thanks to this network an intense local seismic activity has been recorded in the geothermal field and surroundings, from which it has been possible to identify high-frequency Volcano-Tectonic events (VT, >10 Hz) and Long-Period events (LP, 1-8 Hz). The former set of events is mainly associated with the local tectonics and power plant activities; while the latter has been generally recorded after strong earthquakes (Mw>7) occurred in Mexico.</p><p>Consequently, we adapted and applied two tomographic techniques to generate highly resolved seismic models; 1) the Enhanced Seismic Tomography (EST) method using the travel times of local seismic events. The method incorporates the Double Difference tomography and the post-processing Weighted Average Method to generate Vp and Vs models, and 2) the surface wave tomography method based on ambient noise analysis. In this case, we generated 3D anisotropic models of phase and group velocities of the Rayleigh and Love waves from Green functions retrieved by cross-correlation of the continuous records.</p><p>Thanks to the severe pre-processing of the whole seismic database that allowed to correct several errors on the data, and to the methods applied, we were able to obtain reliable and highly resolved models with both techniques.</p><p>Finally, the two sets of events (VT and LP) have been relocated using the 3D seismic velocity models of the region in order to better characterize the structure of the geothermal field and identify regions where the fluids could have a role on the triggering of the LP seismic activity observed.</p><p>This work is performed in the framework of the Mexican European consortium GeMex (Cooperation in Geothermal energy research Europe-Mexico, PT5.2 N: 267084 funded by CONACyT-SENER: S0019, 2015-04, and Horizon 2020, grant agreement No. 727550).</p>
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