Introduction to this special section: Microseismic

This month in The Leading Edge, we present a selection of papers on microseismic technology that captures recent trends in microseismic data processing, acquisition, and interpretation. In soliciting papers, we sought case studies that demonstrated new methods and examples emphasizing the extraction of greater value from microseismic data. Emerging from these diverse papers is a common theme of new tools for microseismic interpretation in which interpretation is enhanced by new processing methods, new acquisition techniques, new quality control methods, and new methods of data integration for evaluating unconventional resources. From its growth as a new technology in the late 1990s, microseismic monitoring of hydraulic fracturing has reached acceptance as a key technology by both geophysicists and engineers in hydraulic fracture mapping. Innovations continue to expand this technology past merely plotting event locations along a horizontal wellbore to map out the fracture growth and rock volumes accessed b...