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In this article we describe EPOS Seismology, the Thematic Core Service consortium for the seismology domain within the European Plate Observing System infrastructure. EPOS Seismology was developed alongside the build-up of EPOS during the last decade, in close collaboration between the existing pan-European seismological initiatives ORFEUS (Observatories and Research Facilities for European Seismology), EMSC (Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center) and EFEHR (European Facilities for Earthquake Hazard and Risk) and their respective communities. It provides on one hand a governance framework that allows a well-coordinated interaction of the seismological community services with EPOS and its bodies, and on the other hand it strengthens the coordination among the already existing seismological initiatives with regard to data, products and service provisioning and further development. Within the EPOS Delivery Framework, ORFEUS, EMSC and EFEHR provide a wide range of services that allow open access to a vast amount of seismological data and products, following and implementing the FAIR principles and supporting open science. Services include access to raw seismic waveforms of thousands of stations together with relevant station and data quality information, parametric earthquake information of recent and historical earthquakes together with advanced event-specific products like moment tensors or source models and further ancillary services, and comprehensive seismic hazard and risk information, covering latest European scale models and their underlying data. The services continue to be available on the well-established domain-specific platforms and websites, and are also consecutively integrated with the interoperable central EPOS data infrastructure. EPOS Seismology and its participating organizations provide a consistent framework for the future development of these services and their operation as EPOS services, closely coordinated also with other international seismological initiatives, and is well set to represent the European seismological research infrastructures and their stakeholders within EPOS.

Decades of photogrammetric records at Bezymianny, one of the most active volcanoes on Earth, allow unveiling morphological changes, eruption and intrusion dynamics, erosion, lava and tephra deposition processes. This data publication releases an almost 7-decade long record, retrieved from airborne, satellite, and UAV platforms. The Kamchatkan Institute of Volcanology and Seismology released archives of high-resolution aerial images acquired in 1967-2013. We complemented the aerial datasets with 2017 Pleiades tri-stereo satellite and UAV images. The images were processed using Erdas Imagine and Photomod software. Here we publish nine quality-controlled point clouds in LAS format referenced to the WGS84 (UTM zone 57N). By comparing the point clouds we were able to describe topographic changes and calculate volumetric differences, details of which were further analyzed in Shevchenko et al. (2020, https://doi.org/...). The ~5-decade-long photogrammetric record was achieved by 8 aerial and 1 satellite-UAV datasets. The 8 sets of near nadir aerial photographs acquired in 1967, 1968, 1976, 1977, 1982, 1994, 2006, and 2013 were taken with various photogrammetry cameras dedicated for topographic analysis, specifically the AFA 41-10 camera (1967, 1968, 1976, and 1977; focal length = 99.086 mm), the TAFA 10 camera (1982 and 1994; focal length = 99.120 mm), and the AFA TE-140 camera (2006 and 2013; focal length = 139.536 mm). These analog cameras have all an 18×18 cm frame size. The acquisition flight altitude above the mean surface of Bezymianny varied from 1,500-2,500 m above mean surface elevation, translating up to >5,000 m above sea level. For photogrammetric processing, we used 3-4 consecutive shots that provided a 60-70% forward overlap. The analog photo negatives were digitized by scanning with Epson Perfection V750 Pro scanner in a resolution of 2,400 pixels/inch (approx. pixel (px) size = 0.01 mm). The mean scale within a single photograph depends on the distance to the surface and corresponds on average to 1:10,000-1:20,000. Thus, each px in the scanned image represents about 10-20 cm resolution on the ground. The coordinates of 12 ground control points were derived from a Theo 010B theodolite dataset collected at geodetic benchmarks during a 1977 fieldwork. These benchmarks were established on the slopes of Bezymianny before the 1977 aerial survey and then captured with the AFA 41-10 aerial camera. The most recent was a satellite dataset acquired on 2017-09-09 by the PHR 1B sensor aboard the Pleiades satellite (AIRBUS Defence & Space) operated by the French space agency (CNES). The forward, nadir and backward camera configuration allows revisiting any point on earth and was tasked for the acquisition of Bezymianny to provide a 0.5 m resolution panchromatic imagery dataset. In order to improve the Pleiades data, we complemented them with UAV data collected on 2017-07-29 with DJI Mavic Pro during fieldwork at Bezymianny. This data publication includes a description of the data (in pdf format) and the nine processed and controlled three-dimensional point clouds (in LAS format). The point clouds can be easily interpolated and imported into most open and commercially available geographic information system (GIS) software. Further details on data and data handling are provided in Shevchenko et al. (2020).

Abstract. Geothermal exploration will help move towards a low-carbon economy and provide a basis for green and sustainable growth. The development of new practical, reliable methods for geophysical characterization of a reservoir has the potential to facilitate a broader application of deep geothermal energy. At the Groß Schönebeck in situ laboratory, a unique vertical seismic profiling (VSP) dataset was recorded in two 4.3 km deep geothermal boreholes using fibre-optic cables in early 2017. The experiment set-up consisted of 61 vibrator points organized in a spiral pattern around the well site to ensure a proper offset and azimuth distribution in the target reservoir section. Data were processed using a standard workflow for VSP. As a result, a detailed three-dimensional 0.75km×1km×4.5 km image around the existing boreholes was created using the Kirchhoff migration algorithm with restricted aperture. The imaging resolved small-scale features in the reservoir essential for the future exploration of the geothermal research site. Borehole data with vertical resolution up to 16 m revealed the existing depth variations of the Elbe reservoir sandstone horizon at 4.08–4.10 km depth and indications of an unconformity in the area where we expect volcanic rocks. In addition, in the borehole data a complex interlaying with numerous pinch-outs in the Upper Rotliegend reservoir section (3.8 to 4 km depth) was discovered. Thereby, we demonstrate that wireline fibre-optic data can significantly contribute to exploration by providing an efficient and reliable method for deep geothermal reservoir imaging.

The immense advances in computer power achieved in the last decades have had a significant impact in Earth science, providing valuable research outputs that allow the simulation of complex natural processes and systems, and generating improved forecasts. The development and implementation of innovative geoscientific software is currently evolving towards a sustainable and efficient development by integrating models of different aspects of the Earth system. This will set the foundation for a future digital twin of the Earth. The codification and update of this software require great effort from research groups and therefore, it needs to be preserved for its reuse by future generations of geoscientists. Here, we report on Geo-Soft-CoRe, a Geoscientific Software & Code Repository, hosted at the archive DIGITAL.CSIC. This is an open source, multidisciplinary and multiscale collection of software and code developed to analyze different aspects of the Earth system, encompassing tools to: 1) analyze climate variability; 2) assess hazards, and 3) characterize the structure and dynamics of the solid Earth. Due to the broad range of applications of these software packages, this collection is useful not only for basic research in Earth science, but also for applied research and educational purposes, reducing the gap between the geosciences and the society. By providing each software and code with a permanent identifier (DOI), we ensure its self-sustainability and accomplish the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles. Therefore, we aim for a more transparent science, transferring knowledge in an easier way to the geoscience community, and encouraging an integrated use of computational infrastructure.Systematic Review Registration: https://digital.csic.es/handle/10261/193580.

Abstract. We performed so-far-unprecedented deep wireline vertical seismic profiling at the Groß Schönebeck site with the novel method of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) to gain more detailed information on the structural setting and geometry of the geothermal reservoir, which is comprised of volcanic rocks and sediments of Lower Permian age. During the survey of 4 d only, we acquired data for 61 source positions using hybrid wireline fiber-optic sensor cables deployed in two 4.3 km deep, already existing wells. While most of the recorded data have a very good signal-to-noise ratio, individual sections of the profiles are affected by characteristic coherent noise patterns. This ringing noise results from incomplete coupling of the sensor cable to the borehole wall, and it can be suppressed to a large extent using suitable filtering methods. After conversion to strain rate, the DAS data exhibit a high similarity to the vertical component data of a conventional borehole geophone. We derived accurate time–depth relationships, interval velocities, and corridor stacks from the recorded data. Based on integration with other well data and geological information, we show that the top of a porous and permeable sandstone interval of the geothermal reservoir can be identified by a positive reflection event. Overall, the sequence of reflection events shows a different character for both wells explained by lateral changes in lithology. The top of the volcanic rocks has a somewhat different seismic response in both wells, and no clear reflection event is obvious at the postulated base of the volcanic rocks, so that their thickness cannot be inferred from individual reflection events in the seismic data alone. The DAS method enabled measurements at elevated temperatures up to 150 ∘C over extended periods and led to significant time and cost savings compared to deployment of a conventional borehole geophone string. This wireline approach finally suggests significant implications for observation options in old wells for a variety of purposes.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.