Publication Date:
2015-06-20
Description:
An unprecedented increase in earthquakes in the U.S. mid-continent began in 2009. Many of these earthquakes have been documented as induced by wastewater injection. We examine the relationship between wastewater injection and U.S. mid-continent seismicity using a newly assembled injection well database for the central and eastern United States. We find that the entire increase in earthquake rate is associated with fluid injection wells. High-rate injection wells (〉300,000 barrels per month) are much more likely to be associated with earthquakes than lower-rate wells. At the scale of our study, a well's cumulative injected volume, monthly wellhead pressure, depth, and proximity to crystalline basement do not strongly correlate with earthquake association. Managing injection rates may be a useful tool to minimize the likelihood of induced earthquakes.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Weingarten, M -- Ge, S -- Godt, J W -- Bekins, B A -- Rubinstein, J L -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2015 Jun 19;348(6241):1336-40. doi: 10.1126/science.aab1345.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA. matthew.weingarten@colorado.edu. ; Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA. ; United States Geological Survey, Denver, CO, USA. ; United States Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26089509" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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