Seismic Monitoring of a Maritime Pine Root-System Failure During Its Overturn: A Field Experiment
Résumé
The mechanical response of a few maritime pines was investigated by a series of experiments at the field scale. During the overturning of two trees, a seismic array was deployed at the ground surface to continuously monitor the micro-seismicity associated with the failure of their root-system. We identified seismic events during the traction process applied to each tree. A threshold force value and a significant duration of the traction process seem to be needed in order for cracks to happen, and for seismic events to be recorded. We identified tens of seismic events, especially during the most advanced stages of the experiments, prior to complete failure of the root-system. However, a few events were observed during early stage of the experiment, when the mechanical solicitation was still in the elastic regime. Using pairs of geophones and seismic intensity ratios, we localized the epicenters of most of the events within the seismic network. According to the sensitivity of the array, all epicenters are roughly localized within a 1 square-meter area. The estimation of epicenters show that the events are aligned to the direction of traction, on the opposite side of the tree.