Advances in Ocean Bottom Seismology

The field of Ocean Bottom Seismology is rapidly expanding, with many types of deployments for a wide variety of targets, motivated in large part by the desire to understand tectonic structures capable of generating earthquakes and tsunamis. Both passive and active seismic studies require a significant economic investment but provide new information about our planet, particularly at active margins. Seafloor sensors have been used to expand seismic monitoring to cover the vast gaps in historical networks, as well as for structural and geodynamic studies, and to understand where seismic signals generated by ocean waves originate. In addition to the institutions possessing their own OBS, there are pools of instruments (such as OBSIP) that have facilitated numerous experiments with different objectives using temporary OBS networks in all the oceans of the world, and which continue to be undertaken. Semi-permanent OBS networks like those in Japan or Cascadia offer the opportunity to make seafloor seismic observations over extended time scales, providing potentially new observables for dynamic signatures sometimes not perceived in shorter-term deployments.

Different marine environments and tectonic settings require innovative solutions to deployment logistics, sensor emplacement and data recovery. Following the extraction of data, special problems relating to a sometimes very noisy environment pose new challenges to maximize data utility. The accelerating number of ocean bottom seismometer deployments and emerging technology, such as fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensing, has propelled marine seismology into a leading role in our field. We welcome contributions in all relevant topics, in particular:

• New insights into subduction zones and other plate boundaries gleaned from ocean bottom seismic and amphibious seismic network deployments;
• Outlining new research projects that require novel seafloor seismic deployment schemes and instrumentation related to marine seismology for the determination of the relevant oceanic tectonic scenarios;
• Original studies that include recent observational data and modern experimental methods, as well as innovative data analysis, including techniques that reduce anthropomorphic and biological noise to obtain a correct interpretation of the oceanic seismic activity.