Eric Larose

• Hab. PhD
• Research Director at Grenoble Alpes University

Ambient seismic noise consists of continuous vibrations randomly excited in time and space, mostly at the Earth's surface, by natural and anthropogenic dynamic phenomena. Noise has long been considered a contaminant of seismic impulse responses from earthquakes or man-made explosions. The deterministic nature of the wave equation, together with the...

Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) shows great potential for earth-sciences applications, notably for landslide surface monitoring at a high spatio-temporal resolution with long-term robustness to meteorological events (rain, fog, snow). The ability to localize RFID tags using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) in a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) ap...

Climate change is increasingly predisposing polar regions to large landslides. Tsunamigenic landslides have occurred recently in Greenland ( Kalaallit Nunaat ), but none have been reported from the eastern fjords. In September 2023, we detected the start of a 9-day-long, global 10.88-millihertz (92-second) monochromatic very-long-period (VLP) seism...

Fragile geological features must undergo frequent structural health assessments to prevent catastrophic failure events. The mechanical behavior of natural sites is largely guided by vibrations of the earth and environmental exposure, but damage is rarely assessed, except empirically. The Chauvet‐Pont d’Arc cave, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, repres...

Plain Language Summary Considerable volumes of liquid water may be trapped within cavities in polythermal glaciers. If these cavities rupture, the resulting outburst flood has the potential to cause devastation in populated mountain areas. With the aim of testing methods to locate such cavities, we installed 60 small 3‐component seismic sensors on...

Investigating spatio-temporal changes in crustal structure is a key to understanding the dynamic processes in the earth’s crust associated with large earthquakes and volcanic activities. The dense seismic network in the northeast part of Japan (Tohoku region) allows us to apply seismic interferometry to continuous records of ambient noise data for...

The amount of water contained in a snowpack, known as snow water equivalent (SWE), is used to anticipate the amount of snowmelt that could supply hydroelectric power plants, fill water reservoirs, or sometimes cause flooding. This work introduces a wireless, non-destructive method for monitoring the SWE of a dry snowpack. The system is based on an...

p>Passive RFID tags have diverse low-cost sensing applications, with sensors either connected to the tag or the tag antenna acting as a sensor, allowing close-range measurements. However, an emerging approach utilizes wave propagation for remote sensing without physical contact. This study investigates how wave propagation across dense grass alters...

p>Passive RFID tags have diverse low-cost sensing applications, with sensors either connected to the tag or the tag antenna acting as a sensor, allowing close-range measurements. However, an emerging approach utilizes wave propagation for remote sensing without physical contact. This study investigates how wave propagation across dense grass alters...

p>Propagation-based sensing is an emerging approach to sense remotely the properties of the propagation channel. This study shows how interrogating tags across 19 m of dense grass influences the phase delay. Moving the tag vertically within the grass, then without grass, is used to estimate the slowness caused by the vegetated volume. The overall v...

Among mountain permafrost landforms, rock glaciers are composed of a heterogeneous mixture of rock debris, ice and liquid water. They can reach surface velocities of several m/yr for the most active ones, potentially causing emerging hazards linked to permafrost thawing and debris flows. As a complement to usual geophysical methods (georadar, activ...

p>Localization of passive Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags has been used to monitor landslide surface displacement since 5 years. This method, applied on slow displacements lower than 1cm per day, allows a high spatiotemporal resolution at a relatively low cost. With the feedback of the previous years, this paper proposes to summarize the...

p>Localization of passive Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags has been used to monitor landslide surface displacement since 5 years. This method, applied on slow displacements lower than 1cm per day, allows a high spatiotemporal resolution at a relatively low cost. With the feedback of the previous years, this paper proposes to summarize the...

Localization of passive Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tags has been used to monitor landslide surface displacement since 5 years. This method, applied on slow displacements lower than 1cm per day, allows a high spatio-temporal resolution at a relatively low cost. With the feedback of the previous years, this paper proposes to summarize the...

Relative seismic velocity change (dv/v) is important for monitoring changes in subsurface material properties and evaluating earthquake-induced rock slope damage in a geological disaster-prone region. In this paper, we present a rapid damage assessment on three slow-moving rock slopes by measuring dv/v decrease caused by the 2022 Ms 6.8 Luding eart...

The damage evolving on rock slopes, including unstable mass failure events, is expected to be associated with a rigidity loss of geomaterials. Therefore, velocity changes (dv/v) inferred from ambient noise interferometry allow remotely assessing the damage state of the slope. However, the time scale and amplitude of the dv/v evolution associated wi...

Open access− Billions of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) passive tags are produced yearly to identify goods remotely. New research and business applications are continuously arising, including recently localization and sensing to monitor earth surface processes. Indeed, passive tags can cost 10 to 100 times less than wireless sensors networks...

This work shows that passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags can be used as low-cost contactless sensors, 10 to measure the variations in snow water equivalent (SWE) of a snowpack. RFID tags are produced massively to remotely identify industrial goods, hence are available commercially off-the-shelf at very low-cost. The introduced measur...

Passive Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), used recently to monitor landslide displacement at a high spatio-temporal resolution, was used to measure only 1D displacement. This study demonstrates the ability to track 2D displacements, using an array of antennas connected to an RFID interrogator. Ten tags were deployed on a landslide for 11 month...

Passive radio-frequency identification (RFID) was recently used to monitor landslide displacement at a high spatio-temporal resolution but only measured 1D displacement. This study demonstrates the tracking of 2D displacements, using an array of antennas connected to an RFID interrogator. Ten tags were deployed on a landslide for 12 months and 2D r...

Slope instabilities, including prone-to-fall rock columns, are known to exhibit clear vibrational modes. The resonance frequencies of these modes can be tracked by seismic instrumentation, allowing the rock column's mechanical and structural properties to be monitored, as well as providing precursors of imminent irreversible failures. In previous s...

landslide in Maca (Peru) from 2012 to 2022

High mountain environments are increasingly affected by rockfall‐related hazards, driven by climate change. Studying rockfall in these environments is, however, challenging due to the inaccessibility of mountain ridges and the complex interaction between controlling factors. In this study, the rock wall of Grosse Grabe North Pillar in the Matter va...

In mountainous, cold temperate and polar sites, the presence of snow cover can affect relative seismic velocity changes (dV/V) derived from ambient noise correlation, but this relation is relatively poorly documented and ambiguous. In this study, we analyzed raw seismic recordings from a snowy flat field site located above Davos (Switzerland), duri...

Billions of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) passive tags are produced yearly to identify goods remotely. New research and business applications are continuously arising, including recently localization and sensing to monitor earth surface processes. Indeed, passive tags can cost 10 to 100 times less than wireless sensors networks and require...

For the release of a slab avalanche, crack propagation within a weak snowpack layer below a cohesive snow slab is required. As crack speed measurements can give insight into underlying processes, we analysed three crack propagation events that occurred in similar snowpacks and covered all scales relevant for avalanche release. For the largest scale...

To evaluate the stress level and damage of a reinforced concrete containment wall (similar to those used in nuclear power plants) and its reaction to pressure variations, we conducted successive ultrasonic experiments on the exterior surface of the containment wall in the gusset area for three consecutive years (2017, 2018 and 2019). During each ex...

Ambient Vibration-Based Structural Health Monitoring (AVB–SHM) studies on prone-to-fall rock compartments have recently succeeded in detecting both pre-failure damaging processes and reinforcement provided by bolting. The current AVB–SHM instrumentation layout is yet generally an overkill, creating cost and power issues and sometimes requiring adva...

In mountainous, cold temperate and polar sites, the presence of a snow cover can affect relative seismic velocity changes (dV/V) derived from ambient noise correlation, but this relation is relatively poorly documented and ambiguous. In this study, we analyzed raw seismic recordings from a snowy flat field site located above Davos (Switzerland), du...

To evaluate the stress level and damage of a reinforced concrete containment wall and its reaction to pressure variations, we implemented successive ultrasonic experiments on the exterior surface of the containment wall in the gusset area for three consecutive years. During each experiment, the pressure inside the containment wall increased gradual...

Billions of passive Radiofrequency tags are produced by the Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) industry every year to identify goods remotely. Enhanced RFID adds the capacity for localisation and sensing that can be used in earth science for long-term and spatially dense monitoring with low-cost tags. Localisation has been used already to monito...

Among mountainous permafrost landforms, rock glaciers are mostly abundant in periglacial areas, as tongue-shaped heterogeneous bodies. Passive seismic monitoring systems have the potential to provide continuous recordings sensitive to hydro-mechanical parameters of the subsurface. Two active rock glaciers located in the Alps (Gugla, Switzerland, an...

Monitoring landslides is essential to understand their dynamics and to reduce the risk of human losses by raising warnings before a failure. A decade ago, a decrease of apparent seismic velocity was detected several days before the failure of a clayey landslide, that was monitored with the ambient noise correlation method. It revealed its potential...

About a decade ago, noise-based monitoring became a key tool in seismology. One of the tools is Passive Image Interferometry (PII), which uses Noise Correlation Functions (NCF) to retrieve seismic velocity variations. Most studies apply PII to vertical components recording oceanic low-frequent ambient noise ( <1 Hz). In this work, PII is applied to...

Among mountainous permafrost landforms, rock glaciers are mostly abundant in periglacial areas, as tongue-shaped heterogeneous bodies. Passive seismic monitoring systems have the potential to provide continuous recordings sensitive to hydro-mechanical parameters of the subsurface. Two active rock glaciers located in the Alps (Gugla, Switzerland and...

Human activity causes vibrations that propagate into the ground as high-frequency seismic waves. Measures to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic caused widespread changes in human activity, leading to a months-long reduction in seismic noise of up to 50%. The 2020 seismic noise quiet period is the longest and most prominent global anthropogenic seismic...

A network of seismometers has been installed on the Gugla rock glacier since October 2015 to estimate seismic velocity changes and detect microseismicity. These two processes are related to mechanical and structural variations occurring within the rock glacier. Seismic monitoring thus allows a better understanding of the dynamics of rock glaciers t...

We evaluated the seismic ambient noise correlation method to monitor landslides, through a litterature review on 9 landslides, also compared with non-landslide studies. Main conclusions : (1) useful for early warning on earthflow (precursor before failure observed on 2 studies) (2) useful to monitor the slow reconsolidation after a failure (4 stu...

Field data are needed for a better understanding of sea ice decline in the context of climate change. The rapid technological and methodological advances of the last decade have led to a reconsideration of seismic methods in this matter. In particular, passive seismology has filled an important gap by removing the need to use active sources. We pre...

Billions of passive radiofrequency tags are produced by the Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) industry every year to identify goods remotely. New research and business applications are continuously arising, including recently localization and sensing for earth science. Indeed, the cost of tags is often several orders of magnitudes below convent...

In this article, we present an ultrasonic method based on diffuse ultrasound with successive excitation amplitudes. This method provides amplitude-dependent parameters of diffuse ultrasound using coda wave interferometry, and these parameters can be used to characterize mechanical change in metallic materials. The localized mechanical change caused...

In tectonically active mountain belts, landslides contribute significantly to erosion. Statistical analysis of regional inventories of earthquake-triggered-landslides after large earthquakes (Mw > 5.5) reveal a complex interaction between seismic shaking, landslide material, and rainfall. However, the contributions of each component have never been...

Among mountainous permafrost landforms, rock glaciers are mostly abundant in periglacial areas, as tongue-shaped heterogeneous bodies. Passive seismic monitoring systems have the potential to provide continuous recordings sensitive to hydro-mechanical parameters of the subsurface. Two active rock glaciers located in the Alps (Gugla, Switzerland and...

Seismic and ultrasonic waves are sometimes used to track fluid injections, propagation, infiltrations in complex material, including geological and civil engineered ones. In most cases, one use the acoustic velocity changes as a proxy for water content evolution. Here we propose to test an alternative seismic or acoustic observable: the waveform de...

The propagation of ultrasonic waves in concrete is affected by its micro-and macro-structure, geometry and properties as well as external influences as stress, temperature or moisture. In addition, age and degradation have a strong influence. Therefore, Ultrasound has been used to monitor concrete samples and structures since decades. However, earl...

Locadiff is a method for imaging local structural changes in a random, heterogeneous medium. It relies on the combination of a forward model to calculate the sensitivity kernel of the source–receiver pairs, with an inversion method to determine the position of the changes. So far, the sensitivity kernel has been evaluated based on an analytical sol...

Volcano monitoring and eruption forecasting are based on the observation and joined interpretation of several precursory phenomena. It is thus important to detect new types of precursor and to study their relationship with forthcoming eruptions. In the last years, variations of seismic velocity have been observed in some volcanoes, mainly basaltic,...

The joint laboratory Geophysics, Geomechanics, Geotechnics Innovation Lab. is a research structure joining the Institute of Earth Sciences (CNRS & Univ. Grenoble Alpes) and the Geolithe private company. This joint laboratory aims at developing new techniques and instrumentation prototypes to monitor natural or artificial instabilities such as lands...

The deployment of three drifting seismic stations on the Arctic sea ice during the winter of 2014–2015 with station inter-spacing between 30 and 80km enables the characterization of the coherent seismic wavefield at these scales through the use of array methods. Two distinct vibra- tional modes are observed, corresponding to the fast and non-disper...

Ground deformation monitoring at a local scale requires accuracy, along with dense spatio-temporal resolution. Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) technology is proposed as an alternative to classical geodetic methods for monitoring displacements of a landslide. Passive RFID tags allow for a very dense resolution, both in time and space, at the s...

The objective of this work is to propose a standard classification of seismic signals generated by gravitational processes and detected at close distances (<1 km). We review the studies where seismic instruments have been installed on unstable slopes and discuss the choice of the seismic instruments and the network geometries. Seismic observations...

In civil engineering, the follow-up of the structures’ concrete can be made by destructive testing. That is not possible in the case of nuclear power plants. So Non Destructive Evaluations are a solution for evaluating the concrete of the containment. NDEs are applied in civil engineering but each structure is a specific case due to its geometry, i...

In the context of seismic monitoring, recent studies made successful use of seismic coda waves to image the lateral extent of medium changes. Locating the depth of the changes, however, remains a challenge. We use multiply scattered body- and surface-wave 3-D combined sensitivity kernels to address this problem. We show that we can locate velocity...

An earthflow/mudflow of a few thousand cubic metres occurred at the toe of the Pont-Bourquin Landslide (PBL, Swiss Alps) in late August 2010. This event was preceded by a drop of about 6% in surface wave velocity (dV/V) determined from ambient vibration records. A seismic monitoring system made of three pairs of sensors was re-installed across the...

Un glissement de terrain a été ausculté en utilisant des techniques bas coût de radio-identification (RFID). Le déplacement d'un tag RFID a été mesuré en continu par différence de phase, et comparé à un extensomètre automatique et à des levés tachéométriques. Cette première expérience a montré l'efficacité de la localisation RFID pour mesurer des d...

A dense seismological array using up to 19 high-sensitivity intermediate period sensors was deployed during 1 yr on and around the Saint-Guérin arch dam in the Alps to (1) quantify the spatial variability of earthquake motions at the base of the dam and (2) monitor the changes in the dynamic response of the dam and its surroundings caused by enviro...

Poster presenting the concept of RFID landslide motion tracking. Received the 'Outstanding Pico and Poster Award' from the EGU

In the last decade, numerous studies focused on the analysis of seismic waves generated by Earth surface processes such as landslides. The installation of seismometers on unstable slopes revealed a variety of seismic signals suspected to be generated by slope deformation, weathering of the slope material or fluid circulation. A standard classificat...

Monitoring the temporal evolution of resonance frequencies and velocity changes detected from ambient seismic noise recordings can help in recognizing reversible and irreversible modifications within unstable rock volumes. With this aim, the long-term ambient seismic noise data set acquired at the potentially unstable cliff of Madonna delSasso (NW...

Diffuse acoustic or seismic waves are highly sensitive to detect changes of mechanical properties in heterogeneous geological materials. In particular, thanks to acousto-elasticity, we can quantify stress changes by tracking acoustic or seismic relative velocity changes in the material at test. In this paper, we report on a small-scale laboratory a...

This paper investigates meteorological factors that affect the phase of radio-frequency identification (RFID) passive tags at 868 MHz, in outdoor conditions. The study identifies the effect of water on the tag and base antennas, the effect of temperature on the cables, tags, and base antenna, the effect of the tag support moisture, and the effect o...

The decline of Arctic sea ice extent is one of the most spectacular signatures of global warming, and studies converge to show that this decline has been accelerating over the last four decades, with a rate that is not reproduced by climate models. To improve these models, relying on comprehensive and accurate field data is essential. While sea ice...

This paper introduces a technique for improving seismic noise correlation functions (NCF) via a singular value decomposition (SVD) of a list of NCF and the Wiener filter. SVD is commonly used for denoising signals by keeping singular values associated with signal while rejecting others. However, singular vectors associated with signal may contain n...

This study uses ambient vibrations to monitor rock bolting works, the efficacy of which is usually difficult to estimate. The test site is a 760 m³ unstable limestone column located in the Bourne valley (Vercors, France). The rock column's resonance frequencies (fX) were identified, corrected for reversible thermal effects and monitored over time....

Environmental seismology consists in studying the coupling between the solid Earth and the cryosphere, or the hydrosphere, the anthropospher. In practice, we monitor the modifications of the wave propagation due to environmental forcing such as temperature and hydrology, using ambient seismicnoise that constitute a continuous, cheap and relatively...

This paper describes the use of an ultrasonic imaging technique (Locadiff [1]) for the NDT&E of concrete structures. By combining coda waveinterferometry and a sensitivity kernel for diffuse waves, Locadiff can monitor the elastic and structural properties of a heterogeneous material with a high sensitivity, and can map changes of these properties...

In multiple scattering media, the coda wave decorrelation relates linearly to the scattering cross-section of structural change when the change is small compared to the wavelength. In practical applications, we assume that the total decorrelation induced by changes in the medium is the sum of the decorrelation induced by each elementary change. In...

Locadiff, an innovative imaging technique based on diffuse waves, has recently been developed in order to image mechanical changes in heterogeneous, geological, or man-made materials. This manuscript reports the on-site application of Locadiff to locate several pre-existing cracks on an aeronautical wind tunnel made of pre-stressed concrete. Using...

Two functions are regularly tested on containment walls in order to anticipate a possible accident. The first is mechanical to resist a possible internal over-pressure and the second is to prevent leakage. The AAPR reference accident is the rupture of a pipe in the primary circuit of a nuclear plant. In this case, the pressure and temperature can r...

In this work we present the results of a seismic-based characterization and monitoring campaigns, carried out on a prone-to-fall granitic cliff in northwestern Italy (Madonna del Sasso, VB). Particularly, we focus on the comparison between the outcomes of microseismicity (event detection, location and time rate) and ambient seismic noise (spectral...

Seismic noise measurements (ambient vibrations) have been increasingly used in rock slope stability assessment for both investigation and monitoring purposes. Recent studies made on gravitational hazard revealed significant spectral amplification at given frequencies and polarization of the wave-field in the direction of maximum rock slope displace...

Passive seismic monitoring data acquired at the potentially unstable granitic cliff of Madonna del Sasso (NW Italy) are presented in this work. The spectral content of seismic noise systematically highlighted clear energy peaks on the unstable sector, interpreted as resonant frequencies of the investigated volume. Ground motion at these frequencies...

This paper describes the use of an ultrasonic imaging technique (Locadiff) for the Non-Destructive Testing & Evaluation of a concrete structure. By combining coda wave interferometry and a sensitivity kernel for diffuse waves, Locadiff can monitor the elastic and structural properties of a heterogeneous material with a high sensitivity, and can map...

Noise-based seismology is proving to be a complementary approach to active-source or earthquake-based methods for imaging and monitoring the Earth’s interior. Until recently, however, noise-based imaging and monitoring relied mostly on the inversion of surface waves reconstructed from correlations of mostly microseismic seismic noise (around 5 s of...

Landslides are natural and complex phenomena which can be encountered all over the world. They affect all types of geological formations and present a large variety of size, morphology and displacements rates. Among these phenomena, landslides in clay-rich formations are particularly complex due to the still unpredictable acceleration and fluidizat...

Ambient vibrations recorded on potentially-unstable rock slopes show that the temporal variations in the spectral content and in the correlation of seismic noise can be related to both reversible and irreversible changes within the rock mass. In this work, we analyzed the seismic recordings acquired at the potentially-unstable granitic cliff of Mad...

This paper introduces a Bayesian approach to achieve high-resolution imaging of sub-wavelength changes in the presence of multiple scattering. The approach is based on the minimization of a cost function defined by the decorrelations induced in the measured waveforms by the apparition of a local changes. Minimization is achieved via a Monte Carlo M...