In unconventional reservoirs, small faults allow the flow ofoil and gas as well as act as obstacles to exploration; for, （1） fracturing facilitates fluid migration, （2） reservoir flooding, and （3） triggering of small earthquakes. These small faults are not generally detected because of the low seismic resolution. However, such small faults are very active and release sufficient energy to initiate a large number of microseismic events （MEs） during hydraulic fracturing. In this study, we identified microfractures （MF） from hydraulic fracturing and natural small faults based on microseismicity characteristics, such as the time-space distribution, source mechanism, magnitude, amplitude, and frequency. First, I identified the mechanism of small faults and MF by reservoir stress analysis and calibrated the ME based on the microseismic magnitude. The dynamic characteristics （frequency and amplitude） of MEs triggered by natural faults and MF were analyzed; moreover, the geometry and activity types of natural fault and MF were grouped according to the source mechanism. Finally, the differences among time-space distribution, magnitude, source mechanism, amplitude, and frequency were used to differentiate natural faults and manmade fractures.
In this paper, it is described that the time-frequency resolution of geophysical signals is affected by the time window function attenuation coefficient and sampling interval and how such effects are eliminated effectively. Improving the signal resolution is the key to signal time-frequency analysis processing and has wide use in geophysical data processing and extraction of attribute parameters. In this paper, authors research the effects of the attenuation coefficient choice of the Gabor transform window function and sampling interval on signal resolution. Unsuitable parameters not only decrease the signal resolution on the frequency spectrum but also miss the signals. It is essential to first give the optimum window and range of parameters through time-frequency analysis simulation using the Gabor transform. In the paper, the suggestions about the range and choice of the optimum sampling interval and processing methods of general seismic signals are given.
