Ice plate deformation and cracking revealed by an in-situ distributed acoustic sensing array

Abstract. The study of seismic sources and wave propagation in ice plate is helpful to understand the structure, migration, fracture mechanics, mass balance and other processes. However, due to extreme environment, in-situ dense seismic observations are rare and the dynamic changes of the ice plate remain poorly understood. We conduct a seismic experiment with distributed acoustic sensing array on a frozen lake. We excite water vibrations by under-water airgun shots. With an artificial intelligence method, we detected seismic signals including high frequency icequakes and low frequency events. Icequakes cluster along the fractures and correlate with the local temperature variation. The flexural-gravity wave reveals the property of the ice plate. Our study demonstrates the utility of DAS array as an in-situ dense seismic network in illuminating the internal failure process and dynamic deformation of ice plate such as ice shelf, which contributes to understanding and prediction of disintegrations of ice shelves.