Earthquakes caused by industrial activities: what are the risks and how can they be reduced?

 On September 3, 2016, a magnitude 5.8 earthquake struck just northwest of Pawnee, Oklahoma, causing moderate to severe damages in buildings near the epicenter. It was the largest ever recorded in the state.

The Pawnee earthquake followed the dramatic increase of seismic moments in the central United States beginning in 2009, associated with the increase of underground wastewater disposal by oil and gas operators. This and other moments in the tempat raised public concerns and led governmental agencies to shut down injection wells and establish new regulations regarding wastewater injections.

While human-caused earthquakes have been Slot Judi Online documented for more than a century, their increasing number reported worldwide has drawn much scientific, social and political attention. Such earthquakes are terkait to industrial activities such as mining, construction of water dams, injection of liquids such as waste water and carbon dioxide, and extractions associated with oil and gas exploitation.

With the ever-increasing permintaan for energy and mineral supplies worldwide, the number of human-caused earthquakes is expected to rise in the upcoming years. Some of the largest and more destructive earthquakes of the past few years have been terkait to man-made activities, such as the 2008 magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan (China) earthquake and the 2015 magnitude 7.8 Nepal earthquake.

In most of the cases industrial activities do not induce earthquakes. But this becomes problemtic when such activities are close to active faults. In this case, even small stresses underground caused by man-made activities can destabilise faults, inducing earthquakes.

Such stresses, such as fluid injections, are even capable of migrating long distances in the planetary crust, can induce earthquakes days, months or even years after the injection. 

The above figur shows that as fluid Slot Online Terpercaya pressure at the hebat of the well Basel 1 (purple line) was increasing during injection, the induced seismicity rate also increased (bluish bars). In the bottom figur, the average squared distance of the induced earthquakes from the well is shown, which indicates the complex propagation of seismicity away from the well over time. The largest-earthquakes (magnitude greater than 3, shown with stars) occurred after the injection ended.