| Popis: |
Over the last few decades, monitoring of soil CO2 efflux has been widely used in different scientific disciplines like volcanic and seismic hazard assessment, carbon capture and sequestration, geothermal well integrity, and others. We installed a comprehensive LICOR LI-8150 monitoring system on the Los Humeros normal fault, one of the major structures in the geothermal production field. Over a five-months period, seven accumulation chambers measured CO2 efflux every hour in combination with an on-site meteorological station recording air temperature, air humidity, barometric pressure, precipitation, wind speed, and wind direction. Seismic activity was recorded simultaneously by a seismic array of 42 stations distributed across the volcanic complex, which identified both, high frequency, volcano tectonic (>10 Hz) and low frequency, long-period events (1-8 Hz). Furthermore, monthly geothermal production and re-injection data are available. Our study aims to (1) characterize significant temporal variations of soil CO2 efflux, (2) assess the effect of environmental parameters, (3) analyze the possible influence of natural seismicity and geothermal exploitation (production/re-injection) on CO2 degassing rates. The latter aspect plays an important role to better understand the hydraulic connection and communication between subsurface and surface along structural discontinuities in the volcanic-geothermal system. |
