High Frequency Receiver Functions in the Dublin Basin: Application to a Potential Geothermal Site

The Dublin Basin (DB) is a Carboniferous sedimentary basin located in the eastern part of Ireland, SW of Dublin. Its deep geothermal potential is strictly related to the SW basin-bounding Blackrock-Newcastle Fault (BNF) system which has been recently drilled with two relatively deep (1.4 km) boreholes. In the framework of the SIM-CRUST project, five broadband seismic stations have been deployed in the same area between July and August 2013, with an inter-station distance of about 1 km. This passive seismological experiment will test the possibility of retrieving the seismic stratigraphy of the shallow crust (0-10 km depth range) by means of the teleseismic Receiver Function (RF) method extended to high frequencies. The preliminary results obtained with the first 6 months of data show the presence of a high lateral variability of the seismic layering along the length of the array and the presence of a low S-velocity layer between 3 and 4 km depth. Future work will be aimed to define the geometry of the BNF and to locate possible anisotropic zones at depth.