Listening to Ice Sheets – Fibre Optic Cables as Seismic Sensors in the Antarctic

The use of fibre as a Distributed Acoustic Sensor (DAS) is a recently developed technology with enormous potential, and, until recently, never tested in Antarctica. Here we show how DAS methods can be used to record icequakes, and to interrogate the internal properties of ice using seismic refraction studies and vertical seismic profiling. In the Austral Summer of 2020, we used fibre optic cables to study the Rutford Ice Stream and the Skytrain Ice Rise of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

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