Name
Rupture Directivity of Hydraulic Fracturing-Induced Microseismicity: A Case Study from the Kaybob-Duvernay Region
Date & Time
Wednesday, May 27, 2026, 11:00 AM - 11:15 AM
Description
Hydraulic fracturing (HF), has been associated with elevated seismicity in recent years. When earthquakes exhibit rupture directivity, seismic waves are amplified in the direction of fault rupture, resulting in stronger ground motions and increased seismic hazard. While HF-related events rarely produce damaging shaking, their rupture characteristics provide valuable insights into the behavior of larger fluid-induced earthquakes and fundamental questions in earthquake physics, with important implications for managing and mitigating hazards in larger‐scale operations. In this study, we characterize the rupture patterns of HF-related microseismic events (Mw0.5-2.5) in the Kaybob-Duvernay region of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin and their relationship to nearby wells using the University of Calgary’s Tony Creek dual Microseismic Experiment (ToC2ME) dataset. We apply the Empirical Green’s Function method adapted from Holmgren et al (2019) to identify mainshock-EGF pairs and constrain the corner frequency (fc) at nearby stations. For each mainshock, we examine the azimuthal variation of fc and the ratio of maximum to minimum fc to infer rupture direction and quantify the intensity of the directivity. Of the 224 largest event, 29 exhibit significant directivity (fc_max /fc_min > 2). Events occurring during the initial well operations tend to rupture away from the active well, with average intensities around 2. In contrast, events that occurred later during higher intensity of completion ruptured toward three active wells, with slightly higher intensities of 2-3. We show how these observed rupture patterns correlate with source properties and HF operation parameters.
Location Name
Marion McCaine-Ondaatje Hall
Full Address
Dalhousie University
Halifax NS
Canada
Session Type
Oral Presentation
Abstract ID
287
Speaker Organization
University of Toronto
Session Name
S4 (1 of 2)
Co-authors
Semechah Lui, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto and Department of Chemical and Physical Sciences, University of Toronto Mississauga Nadine Ushakov, Department of Sustainable Earth Systems Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas
Presenting Author
Masooma Hasnain ,Department of Earth Sciences, University of Toronto