Earthquakes Influenced by Water

Abstract

AbstractInjecting fluids in the crust, or their extraction, changes pore pressure and poroelastic stresses. Both pressure and stress changes can promote seismicity and, hence, the seismic events are called induced earthquakes. The filling of reservoirs on Earth’s surface can also induce earthquakes from some combination of surface loading and pore pressure changes. Attribution of any given earthquake to human activities, however, is not always straightforward. There remains debate about what controls the magnitude of induced earthquakes, the relative importance of pore pressure changes and poroelastic stresses, and how to best manage injection and extraction to minimize seismicity. As the scale and distribution of subsurface engineering expand globally, we should expect more and larger induced earthquakes in the future.