Earthquake!

[Circle W]

Hearing of multiple earthquakes today in the Stillwater area. A friend even claimed it shook one of her decorations off the wall! They seem like a daily occurrence these days.

 

[texasjohn]

That's a fracking lot of quakes....guess they are the price paid for gas these days

 

[Xfaxman]

4 around Stillwater yesterday:

 

[Xfaxman]

Two near I35 so far today:

 

[texasjohn]

Am wondering....do you see a correlation between the quakes and injection wells in the area?

In Oklahoma, water, fracking - and a swarm of quakes | Reuters

 

[Xfaxman]

Here is the latest theory:

OKLAHOMA CITY - It's been a shaky last week here in central Oklahoma, following on the heels of a shaky last year -- a record-breaking year, in fact.
According to the Oklahoma Geological Survey (OGS), there were more than 2,800 earthquakes in Oklahoma in 2013. That's twice the previous high, established in 2011.

The vast majority of the earthquakes aren't strong enough to be felt, much less cause any damage. However, enough are felt and do cause minor damage that more and more Oklahomans are clamoring for an explanation as to their cause.

Joe and Mary Reneau, who live near Prague, certainly have a passing interest. Their home was devastated in November 2011's 5.6 magnitude earthquake in Prague.

"Every corner of the house, every corner of every room was fractured," said Joe Reneau.

Since then, the couple has read everything they can about Oklahoma's earthquakes

"I think we deserve to know what's causing this," Mary insisted.

Seismologists have been studying the quakes and have offered differing theories about what's happening. There does seem to be general consensus that oil and gas activity is playing a role in the increased seismicity, but no one can say just how big a role.

One researcher, a Tulsa geologist, is now suggesting something else may be at work -- the weather and aquifers.

"Where these quakes have occurred," explained Jean Antonides, "they all have occurred around these aquifers."

Aquifers are essentially underground reservoirs -- a body of permeable rock, through which water can pass easily. There are many in Oklahoma, and the amount of water they contain can be affected by both weather and human activity.

Antonides says his research shows that aquifers near the location of certain earthquakes had been depleted, through both drought and increased human demand, and then suddenly refilled, through intense and heavy rains.

"When you have rainfall amounts of six inches over a few day period," Antonides pointed out, "these rainfalls cover a thousand square miles -- that's a lot of weight."

That much new weight – potentially trillions of tons -- if it's along or across a fault, can be enough to cause an earthquake.

"If you change the weight, relative near surface, across that fault -- either reducing the weight on one side, loading up the other side or vice versa," Antonides explained, "that could be the trigger point."

Antonides' paper lays out evidence that this hydrologic loading could have triggered, not only the Prague earthquake, but last April's 4.3 magnitude quake in Luther, a 5.8 M quake in Virginia in 2011, and others. University of Oklahoma research seismologist Austin Holland says he may be right.

"I think, in some cases," Holland told us, "there's really strong evidence that hydrologic loads can trigger earthquakes."

Holland himself theorized the weight of the extra water in Edmond's rain-swollen Arcadia Lake last summer may have caused the earthquakes that rattled Edmond in the fall.

"I find it difficult to comprehend," said Joe Reneau.

The Reneaus don't claim to be experts, but, like many, they're convinced the quakes are somehow tied to increased oil and gas activity.

"And that this new theory about the aquifers," said Mary Reneau, "is just the oil and gas companies' way of diverting attention from them to something else."

"A lot of us take offense at that," said Antonides.

Antonides does work for an oil and gas company -- New Dominion -- but says his theory is based on real science and real data.

"The key is putting everything out there, and looking at all the possibilities," Antonides insisted.

On that point, he and the Reneaus are in agreement.

"By putting it out there," said Joe Reneau, "all the other experts will have their opportunity to question it, examine it, and reach their own conclusions."

From: A New Theory About What's Causing Oklahoma's Earthquakes - News9.com - Oklahoma City, OK - News, Weather, Video and Sports |

 

[Xfaxman]

Am wondering....do you see a correlation between the quakes and injection wells in the area?
------------

In an analysis of the recent activity, Holland and colleagues Amie Gibson and Christopher Toth stated there are no salt-water deposit wells within several miles of the recent quakes. Furthermore, there were no hydraulic fracturing operations in the area, indicating it is not a possible cause either, the document stated. - See more at: Is Arcadia Lake linked to recent earthquakes? ?ｻ Homepage ?ｻ The Edmond Sun



Feb 3, 2009 1:47pm
Earthquakes, whether you豎*e a believer or an actuary, are "acts of God." We humans do not have the power to predict, stop, or cause them. Or so we think. We all jumped a bit at a headline in The Telegraph of London: "Chinese earthquake may have been man-made, say scientists." "An earthquake that killed at least 80,000 people in Sichuan last year may have been triggered by an enormous dam just miles from the epicentre," says Malcolm Moore逞ｴ article from Shanghai. (See the full text HERE.) "The 511ft-high Zipingpu dam holds 315 million tonnes of water and lies just 550 yards from the fault line, and three miles from the epicentre, of the Sichuan earthquake. "Now scientists in China and the United States believe the weight of water, and the effect of it penetrating into the rock, could have affected the pressure on the fault line underneath, possibly unleashing a chain of ruptures that led to the quake. "Fan Xiao, the chief engineer of the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau in Chengdu, said it was 螳菊ry likely that the construction and filling of the reservoir in 2004 had led to the disaster." Huh? We talked to a number of seismologists, and it turns out there is a lively debate going on in geology, with scientists believing that while the weight of a reservoir may not actually "cause" an earthquake, it may add to the stresses near a fault line, and hasten a quake that would have happened eventually. "There have been some fairly large earthquakes that you can say were triggered by reservoirs around them, but proving this is not easy," says Leonardo Seeber of Columbia University逞ｴ Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y. In the case of last year逞ｴ China disaster, he says, "the conditions for the earthquake were there, and the trigger the reservoir is, shall we say, the straw that broke the camel逞ｴ back." The earthquake, in Sichuan Province in May, is estimated to have killed about 80,000 people and left five million homeless. The region where it struck has been fairly quiet, but it is close to the line between tectonic plates where the Indian subcontinent is pushing northward into the rest of Asia. Christian Klose, a researcher at Columbia, made a presentation to the American Geophysical Union in December that in Sichuan, "The water volume amplified the strain energy on the Earth逞ｴ crust," relieving stresses in some places underground but worsening it elsewhere. His abstract is HERE. Richard Kerr and Richard Stone, writing in the journal Science (their piece is HERE, but it逞ｴ subscription-only), say he is coy about his explosive subject; he never even mentions the dam. But his colleagues know, and urge caution. Paul Earle of the U.S. Geological Survey, in an e-mail to me, writes, "the only remote possible effect the dam had was to trigger the earthquake before it would have otherwise happened if the dam was not there. It is very difficult to make this connection and it remains rather speculative." Still, Seeber says there have been cases in the past where a reservoir provided a possible trigger for an earthquake, and in some, there逞ｴ no saying the quake would have happened any time soon without it. Are we more powerful than we thought? Seeber says it sometimes takes surprisingly little to upset the earth beneath us.


From: Did Humans Help Cause the Great China Earthquake? - ABC News

 

[texasjohn]

looks like a firm "maybe."

 

[Xfaxman]

For north central Oklahoma, Sunday, 23rd.


Earthquakes

 

[dirt ditch]

Ever hear of the Nemaha fault? Scroll down about 3/4 way on this page for Oklahoma info.

Kansas earthquakes

Here is another paper with lots of info.

http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/2003/mcbee/images/mcbee.pdf