A robust method for microseismic event detection based on automatic phase pickers

We present a robust method for the automatic detection and picking of microseismic events that consists of two steps. The first step provides accurate single-trace picks using three automatic phase pickers adapted from earthquake seismology. In the second step, a multi-channel strategy is implemented to associate (or not) the previous picks with actual microseismic signals by taking into account their expected alignment in all the available channels, thus reducing the false positive rate. As a result, the method provides the number of declared microseismic events, a confidence indicator associated with each of them, and the corresponding traveltime picks. Results using two field noisy data records demonstrate that the automatic detection and picking of microseismic events can be carried out with a relatively high confidence level and accuracy.