Rupture directivity analysis data of hydraulic fracturing-induced seismic events in a shale gas field near Fox Creek, Alberta, Canada

This data repository contains the raw waveforms of seven hydraulic fracturing-induced seismic events, together with their rupture directivity analysis. The entire data is consolidated in one .mat file per seismic event (which can be read with Matlab and Octave). A detailed description of the .mat files, and a Matlab script to import and visualise the seismic data and rupture directivity analysis of each event, is also included in this repository. The passive seismic dataset was collected in a shale gas field near Fox Creek, Alberta, Canada, during a multi-stage hydraulic fracturing stimulation that induced shallow earthquakes (less than 5 km deep) of magnitudes up to 3.2. This area has experienced in recent years multiple cases on induced seismicity associated with oil and gas operations, including hydraulic fracturing and wastewater disposal, of magnitudes above 4.0 in some cases. The full passive seismic dataset was collected between October and November 2016 and made open source through a GitHub repository ( https://github.com/ToC2ME). To determine the rupture directivity of each induced seismic event, we use the Empirical Green's Functions (EGF) method to first obtain apparent source time functions (ASTF), and then measure the rupture time at each seismic station. We then invert the rupture directivity of each seismic event based on the azimuthal variation of the measured rupture times at each seismic station. Observations of rupture directivity (the direction of propagation of the earthquake rupture) can provide important information as to the nature of the interactions between injection-induced pressure increases and earthquake nucleation. Measurement of rupture directivity could therefore have important implications for induced seismicity hazard management. The rupture directivity analysis of these hydraulic fracturing-induced seismic events was led and coordinated by Dr. James Verdon and Dr. Germán Rodríguez at the School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol.

Date (Creation): 2026-01-29

Citation identifier: http://data.bgs.ac.uk/id/dataHolding/13608620

Point of contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
University of Bristol	Dr J P Verdon	not available	Originator
University of Bristol	Germán Rodríguez	not available	Originator
NORSAR	Joanna Holmgren	not available	Originator
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	not available	Distributor
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	not available	Point of contact

Maintenance and update frequency: notApplicable

GEMET - INSPIRE themes, version 1.0

Geology

BGS Thesaurus of Geosciences

Hydraulic fracturing
Induced seismicity
Shale gas

dataCentre

Keywords

NERC_DDC

Access constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: licenceOGL

Other constraints: Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]"

Use constraints: Other restrictions

Other constraints: The copyright of materials derived from the British Geological Survey's work is vested in the Natural Environment Research Council [NERC]. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a retrieval system of any nature, without the prior permission of the copyright holder, via the BGS Intellectual Property Rights Manager. Use by customers of information provided by the BGS, is at the customer's own risk. In view of the disparate sources of information at BGS's disposal, including such material donated to BGS, that BGS accepts in good faith as being accurate, the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) gives no warranty, expressed or implied, as to the quality or accuracy of the information supplied, or to the information's suitability for any use. NERC/BGS accepts no liability whatever in respect of loss, damage, injury or other occurence however caused.

Other constraints: Available under the Open Government Licence subject to the following acknowledgement accompanying the reproduced NERC materials "Contains NERC materials ©NERC [year]"

Spatial representation type: Grid

Language: English

Topic category

Geoscientific information

Geographic identifier: ALBERTA [id=744300]
British Geological Survey Gazetteer: Geographical hierarchy from Geosaurus 1979 creation

Begin date: 2016-10-01

End date: 2016-11-03

Unique resource identifier: WGS 84 (EPSG::4326)

Distribution format

Name	Version
MATLAB (MAT)

Distributor contact

Organisation name	Individual name	Electronic mail address	Role
British Geological Survey	Enquiries	not available	Distributor

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:DOWNLOAD-1.0-http--download	https://webapps.bgs.ac.uk/services/ngdc/accessions/index.html#item191397	Data

OnLine resource

Protocol	Linkage	Name
WWW:LINK-1.0-http--related	https://doi.org/10.5285/9b280744-4af3-471d-8baa-8bfe2b2d08b3	Citation Information - Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

Hierarchy level: Dataset

Other: dataset

Conformance result

Title: INSPIRE Implementing rules laying down technical arrangements for the interoperability and harmonisation of Geology

Date (Publication): 2011

Explanation: See the referenced specification

Pass: No

Conformance result

Title: Commission Regulation (EU) No 1089/2010 of 23 November 2010 implementing Directive 2007/2/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards interoperability of spatial data sets and services

Date (Publication): 2010-12-08

Explanation: See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:323:0011:0102:EN:PDF

Pass: No

Statement: The script RupDirAnalysis_AllEvents.m (last tested in Matlab R2024b) automatically imports all .mat files and generates two figures per seismic event; the first one with the raw seismic traces and picked P- and S-wave arrivals, and the second one with the ASTFs obtained for each component of each seismic station (one vertical and two horizontal components), the stacked ASTF per station (either from all three components, or only from the horizontal components), and the measured rupture time at each station. Similar figures from the same seismic events are shown in Rodríguez-Pradilla et al (2026). Finally, to plot the raw seismic traces of each event we use wiggle.m, which is part of the Matlab and Octave-based SegyMAT library (open source; https://segymat.sourceforge.net/).