DISTRIBUTED TEMPERATURE MEASUREMENTS AT AN ACTIVE PLATE-BOUNDING FAULT USING FIBRE OPTIC SENSORS

Abstract

New Zealand attracts people for its liveliness, but its geography produces more seismic events and the Southern Alpine Fault is one of the largest sources of such activities. Deep fault drilling project -2B was commissioned to explore and understand the geophysical properties of the fault at depth. This involves the distributed temperature monitoring along the depth of the boreholes in the Whataroa valley. Here, we report the development and field deployment of the Raman based distributed fibre optic temperature sensor. The temperature profiles and its gradient are estimated using the indigenous interrogator and results compared to those of the commercial DTS interrogator.