The Pecos Array: A Temporary Nodal Seismic Experiment in the Pecos, Texas, Region of the Delaware Basin

Abstract

Abstract With increasing earthquakes in the Delaware basin since 2009, earthquake studies, including accurate hypocenters, are critically needed in the Delaware basin to identify the structures producing earthquakes, and to determine if they are related to unconventional petroleum development and production. In 2018, with funding from the Texas Seismological Network, we deployed and maintained a nodal network of 25 Magseis Fairfield Z-Land Generation 2 5-Hz seismic nodes in the Pecos, Texas, region of the Delaware basin, known as, The Pecos Array. The network was deployed from November 2018 to the beginning of January 2020, with an additional two months of data recorded in September and October 2020. The network collected continuous three-component data with a 1000-Hz sampling rate. The spacing of the nodes varied from ∼2 km in town to ∼10 km farther away from the city center. The primary goal of this network was to improve estimation of event hypocenters, which will help to determine why there has been an increase in earthquakes over the past several years. In this article, we summarize the scientific motivation, deployment details, and data quality of this network. Data quality statistics show that we successfully collected continuous data with signal-to-noise ratios that allow us to detect and locate events, hundreds of them being estimated at ML<0.50. This unique dataset is contributing to new seismotectonic studies in the Delaware basin.