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Published February 16, 2016 | Supplemental Material + Published
Journal Article Open

Wastewater disposal and earthquake swarm activity at the southern end of the Central Valley, California

Abstract

Fracture and fault zones can channel fluid flow and transmit injection-induced pore pressure changes over large distances (>km), at which seismicity is rarely suspected to be human induced. We use seismicity analysis and hydrogeological models to examine the role of seismically active faults in inducing earthquakes. We analyze a potentially injection-induced earthquake swarm with three events above M4 near the White Wolf fault (WWF). The swarm deviates from classic main aftershock behavior, exhibiting uncharacteristically low Gutenberg-Richter b of 0.6, and systematic migration patterns. Some smaller events occurred southeast of the WWF in an area of several disposal wells, one of which became active just 5 months before the main swarm activity. Hydrogeological modeling revealed that wastewater disposal likely contributed to seismicity via localized pressure increase along a seismically active fault. Our results suggest that induced seismicity may remain undetected in California without detailed analysis of local geologic setting, seismicity, and fluid diffusion.

Additional Information

© 2016 American Geophysical Union. Received 8 NOV 2015; Accepted 16 JAN 2016; Accepted article online 22 JAN 2016; Published online 4 FEB 2016. The authors thank Semechah Lui, Preston Jordan, Bill Foxall, Emily Brodsky, and members of the Induced Seismicity Consortium at USC for helpful comments and discussions. The manuscript benefitted from comments by Art McGarr and Michael Wysession. The well and operational data were supplied by the California Department of Conservation (www.doggr.com), and the seismicity data by the Southern California Earthquake Center (doi: 10.7909/C3WD3xH1) and Advanced National Seismic Systems. This study was funded by NEHRP/USGS grants G14AP00075 and G15AP00095 to Caltech, by the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC) under contribution numbers 12017 and 15168 and the Induced Seismicity Consortium (ISC) at USC.

Attached Files

Published - Goebel_et_al-2016-Geophysical_Research_Letters.pdf

Supplemental Material - grl53969-sup-0001-supinfo.pdf

Supplemental Material - grl53969-sup-0002-supinfo.zip

Supplemental Material - grl53969-sup-0003-supinfo.gif

Supplemental Material - grl53969-sup-0004-supinfo.gif

Supplemental Material - grl53969-sup-0005-supinfo.zip

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