May 5, 2019By Eurasia Review
This USGS map (click here) shows the potential for an area to experience damage from natural or human-induced earthquakes in 2016.
The hotspot on the map west of Tennessee and east of Arkansas and Missouri is the Mississippi River. When seismic activity occurs along a river, there is always a chance it could open a cavern that will swallow the river.
Using data from field experiments and modeling of ground faults, (click here) researchers at Tufts University have discovered that the practice of subsurface fluid injection used in ‘fracking’ and wastewater disposal for oil and gas exploration could cause significant, rapidly spreading earthquake activity beyond the fluid diffusion zone.
Deep fluid injections — greater than one kilometer deep — are known to be associated with enhanced seismic activity–often thought to be limited to the areas of fluid diffusion. Yet the study, published in the journal Science, tests and strongly supports the hypothesis that fluid injections are causing potentially damaging earthquakes further afield by the slow slip of pre-existing fault fracture networks, in domino-like fashion....
...The hazard posed by fluid-induced earthquakes is a matter of increasing public concern in the US. The man-made earthquake effect is considered responsible for making Oklahoma– a very active region of oil and gas exploration–the most productive seismic region in the country, including California. “It’s remarkable that today we have regions of man-made earthquake activity that surpass the level of activity in natural hot spots like southern California,” said Robert C. Viesca, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Tufts University’s School of Engineering, co-author of the study and Bhattacharya’s post-doc supervisor. “Our results provide validation for the suspected consequences of injecting fluid deep into the subsurface, and an important tool in assessing the migration and risk of induced earthquakes in future oil and gas exploration.”...
