Boulder-induced Turbulence Drives Shift in Seismic Frequency

Turbulent flows capable of mobilizing sediments, despite being studied over the past 100 years, continue to constitute an elusive process. In environmental seismology, seismic waves generated by the interplay of surface processes and the Earth offer a key to unraveling the dynamics of river processes. We studied the seismic signals emitted during floods in two tributaries with large boulders. Early findings indicated an unusually high dominant seismic frequency, reaching 2-4 times the frequency observed in nearby channels with smoother beds. Consistent anomalous high-frequency content during times without sediment transport prompts our hypothesis that turbulence is the key process driving the frequency shift. We hypothesized that the most energetic turbulent eddies, dominating the signal, decrease in size in response to the boulder-influenced constrained flow geometry, and we argue that this effect possesses a first-order control on the frequency shift. A frequency scaling law with boulder spacing, approximating boulder-induced eddy size, shows good agreement with our field data. The dynamics of the eddies under changing flow velocity are well predicted by a power law function of seismic frequency with water depth. The trend breaks at the onset of bedload transport, indicating that energy is dissipated through the partitioning between turbulence and sediment transport. Our study emphasizes that seismic frequency effectively records the dominant morphology and fluvial processes, revealing the intricate interaction between roughness and seismic energy.