Flowing water and the movement of sediments along the streambed generate elastic (seismic) waves that propagate into the surrounding Earth materials.
[1] An experiment in 1990 in the Italian Alps was one of the earliest to demonstrate that seismometers could detect discernible fluvial signals within the seismic noise generated by flow.
[3] Six seismometers recorded average velocity of ground oscillations along an alpine river that was also monitored for discharge and bedload with a sediment trap.
[4] The principles of fluvial and environmental seismology can be applied to all sorts of surficial processes, including debris flows, landslides, lahars, glacial movement and icequakes, etc.
[11] The two main signals that have thus far been extracted from seismic noise generated by rivers are 1) the turbulent flow of water and 2) bedload transport of sediments.
[7][12] Methods of fluvial seismology provide a means for continuous indirect observations of phenomena that are 1) difficult and dangerous to measure, 2) infrequent, and 3) estimated or poorly constrained.
[2] The use of seismology to understand fluvial processes is an improvement on several existing methods (such as sediment traps, direct sampling, impact plates or geophones buried in streambed) because