Seismic signature of turbulence during the 2017 Oroville Dam spillway erosion crisis

Goodling, Phillip J.; Lekic, Vedran; Prestegaard, Karen

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-351-2018

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-351-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

From process to signal – advancing environmental...

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-351-2018

© Author(s) 2018. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 6, issue 2

Research article

|

09 May 2018

Research article |

| 09 May 2018

Seismic signature of turbulence during the 2017 Oroville Dam spillway erosion crisis

Phillip J. Goodling, Vedran Lekic, and Karen Prestegaard

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-6-351-2018-supplement

Data sets

UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, Dataset Berkeley Digital Seismic Network (BDSN) https://doi.org/10.7932/BDSN

UC Berkeley Seismological Laboratory, Dataset Northern California Earthquake Data Center (NCEDC) https://doi.org/10.7932/NCEDC

Model code and software

Colorcet.m [Computer Code] Peter Kovesi http://peterkovesi.com/projects/colourmaps/index.html

Short summary

The Oroville Dam flood control spillway suffered catastrophic erosion damage in February 2017. We find that seismic waves recorded by a seismometer 2 km away contain information about the flow turbulence and damage location in the spillway. We show that enhanced turbulence due to spillway damage excites louder seismic waves at a given flow rate, which can be used to detect the onset and track the migration of erosion damage. The methods we use could be used to monitor other structures or rivers.