Publication Date:
2013-07-03
Description:
Permeability controls fluid flow in fault zones and is a proxy for rock damage after an earthquake. We used the tidal response of water level in a deep borehole to track permeability for 18 months in the damage zone of the causative fault of the 2008 moment magnitude 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake. The unusually high measured hydraulic diffusivity of 2.4 x 10(-2) square meters per second implies a major role for water circulation in the fault zone. For most of the observation period, the permeability decreased rapidly as the fault healed. The trend was interrupted by abrupt permeability increases attributable to shaking from remote earthquakes. These direct measurements of the fault zone reveal a process of punctuated recovery as healing and damage interact in the aftermath of a major earthquake.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Xue, Lian -- Li, Hai-Bing -- Brodsky, Emily E -- Xu, Zhi-Qing -- Kano, Yasuyuki -- Wang, Huan -- Mori, James J -- Si, Jia-Liang -- Pei, Jun-Ling -- Zhang, Wei -- Yang, Guang -- Sun, Zhi-Ming -- Huang, Yao -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2013 Jun 28;340(6140):1555-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1237237.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, USA. lxue3@ucsc.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23812711" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
China
;
*Disasters
;
*Earthquakes
;
*Groundwater
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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