Justin L. Rubinstein

Non-volcanic tremor driven by large transient shear stresses

Non-impulsive seismic radiation or ‘tremor’ has long been observed at volcanoes and more recently around subduction zones. Although the number of observations of non-volcanic tremor is steadily increasing, the causative mechanism remains unclear. Some have attributed non-volcanic tremor to the movement of fluids, while its coincidence with geodetically observed slow-slip events at regular intervals has led others to consider slip on the plate interface as its cause. Low-frequency earthquakes in Japan, which are believed to make up at least part of non-volcanic tremor, have focal mechanisms and locations that are consistent with tremor being generated by shear slip on the subduction interface. In Cascadia, however, tremor locations appear to be more distributed in depth than in Japan, making them harder to reconcile with a plate interface shear-slip model. Here we identify bursts of tremor that radiated from the Cascadia subduction zone near Vancouver Island, Canada, during the strongest shaking from the moment magnitude Mw = 7.8, 2002 Denali, Alaska, earthquake. Tremor occurs when the Love wave displacements are to the southwest (the direction of plate convergence of the overriding plate), implying that the Love waves trigger the tremor. We show that these displacements correspond to shear stresses of approximately 40 kPa on the plate interface, which suggests that the effective stress on the plate interface is very low. These observations indicate that tremor and possibly slow slip can be instantaneously induced by shear stress increases on the subduction interface—effectively a frictional failure response to the driving stress.

High-rate injection is associated with the increase in U.S. mid-continent seismicity

Making quakes depends on injection rates Wastewater injection wells induce earthquakes that garner much attention, especially in tectonically inactive regions. Weingarten et al. combined information from public injection-well databases from the eastern and central United States with the best earthquake catalog available over the past 30 years. The rate of fluid injection into a well appeared to be the most likely decisive triggering factor in regions prone to induced earthquakes. Along these lines, Walsh III and Zoback found a clear correlation between areas in Oklahoma where waste saltwater is being injected on a large scale and areas experiencing increased earthquake activity. Science, this issue p. 1336; Sci. Adv. 10.1126/sciadv.1500195 (2015). High injection rates of wastewater into deep wells increase the risk of earthquakes in regions prone to induced seismicity. 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.

Evidence for Widespread Nonlinear Strong Ground Motion in the MW 6.9 Loma Prieta Earthquake

We exploit 55 repeating microearthquake sequences on the San Andreas Fault, just south of the rupture zone of the 1989 M W 6.9 Loma Prieta Earthquake, to search for time-dependent properties of the Earths crust. Using moving window waveform cross correlation, we identify clear and systematic delays as large as 20 msec for the direct S wave and exceeding 50 msec in the early S -wave coda following the Loma Prieta mainshock. Others have also identified phase delays (velocity reductions) associated with damaging earthquakes and they have suggested a myriad of possible causal mechanisms. Here, we present new evidence for a mechanism to produce velocity reductions correlated in time and space with an earthquake. A strong correlation between the spatial patterns of S delays and the intensity of strong ground motion in the Loma Prieta Earthquake suggests that physical damage, the formation or growth of cracks during strong ground motion, to the Earths shallow crust is responsible for the observed velocity reductions. The strong spatial variability in S delays over short distances and the strong correlation of the magnitude of delays with surface geology indicate that the phase delays accumulate primarily near the receiver. The effect is stronger at stations on young, soft rocks than at stations on old, hard rock. Disproportionately larger S coda delays than P coda delays suggest that the cracks formed by the strong shaking are fluid filled. In the 10 years after Loma Prieta, the initial increase in travel times reduces logarithmically with respect to time, often back to the premainshock levels. We attribute this behavior to the same “slow dynamic” healing observed in laboratory studies of the recovery of materials from transient nonlinear strain. Manuscript received 14 January 2004.

Coping with earthquakes induced by fluid injection

Hazard may be reduced by managing injection activities Large areas of the United States long considered geologically stable with little or no detected seismicity have recently become seismically active. The increase in earthquake activity began in the mid-continent starting in 2001 (1) and has continued to rise. In 2014, the rate of occurrence of earthquakes with magnitudes (M) of 3 and greater in Oklahoma exceeded that in California (see the figure). This elevated activity includes larger earthquakes, several with M > 5, that have caused significant damage (2, 3). To a large extent, the increasing rate of earthquakes in the mid-continent is due to fluid-injection activities used in modern energy production (1, 4, 5). We explore potential avenues for mitigating effects of induced seismicity. Although the United States is our focus here, Canada, China, the UK, and others confront similar problems associated with oil and gas production, whereas quakes induced by geothermal activities affect Switzerland, Germany, and others.

The 2001–Present Induced Earthquake Sequence in the Raton Basin of Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado

We investigate the ongoing seismicity in the Raton Basin and find that the deep injection of wastewater from the coal-bed methane field is responsible for inducing the majority of the seismicity since 2001. Many lines of evidence indicate that this earthquake sequence was induced by wastewater injection. First, there was a marked increase in seismicity shortly after major fluid injection began in the Raton Basin in 1999. From 1972 through July 2001, there was one M ≥ 4 earthquake in the Raton Basin, whereas 12 occurred between August 2001 and 2013. The statistical likelihood that such a rate change would occur if earthquakes behaved randomly in time is 3.0%. Moreover, this rate change is limited to the area of industrial activity. Earthquake rates remain low in the surrounding area. Second, the vast majority of the seismicity is within 5 km of active disposal wells and is shallow, ranging between 2 and 8 km depth. The two most carefully studied earthquake sequences in 2001 and 2011 have earthquakes within 2 km of high-volume, high-injection-rate wells. Third, injection wells in the area are commonly very high volume and high rate. Two wells adjacent to the August 2011 M 5.3 earthquake injected about 4.9 million cubic meters of wastewater before the earthquake, more than seven times the amount injected at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal well that caused damaging earthquakes near Denver, Colo- rado, in the 1960s. The August 2011 M 5.3 event is the second-largest earthquake to date for which there is clear evidence that the earthquake sequence was induced by fluid injection.

Non-volcanic Tremor: A Window into the Roots of Fault Zones

The recent discovery of non-volcanic tremor in Japan and the coincidence of tremor with slow-slip in Cascadia have made earth scientists reevaluate our models for the physical processes in subduction zones and on faults in general. Subduction zones have been studied very closely since the discovery of slow-slip and tremor. This has led to the discovery of a number of related phenomena including low frequency earthquakes and very low frequency earthquakes. All of these events fall into what some have called a new class of events that are governed under a different frictional regime than simple brittle failure. While this model is appealing to many, consensus as to exactly what process generates tremor has yet to be reached. Tremor and related events also provide a window into the deep roots of subduction zones, a poorly understood region that is largely devoid of seismicity. Given that such fundamental questions remain about non-volcanic tremor, slow-slip, and the region in which they occur, we expect that this will be a fruitful field for a long time to come.

Oklahoma experiences largest earthquake during ongoing regional wastewater injection hazard mitigation efforts

The 3 September 2016, Mw 5.8 Pawnee earthquake was the largest recorded earthquake in the state of Oklahoma. Seismic and geodetic observations of the Pawnee sequence, including precise hypocenter locations and moment tensor modeling, shows that the Pawnee earthquake occurred on a previously unknown left-lateral strike-slip basement fault that intersects the mapped right-lateral Labette fault zone. The Pawnee earthquake is part of an unprecedented increase in the earthquake rate in Oklahoma that is largely considered the result of the deep injection of waste fluids from oil and gas production. If this is, indeed, the case for the M5.8 Pawnee earthquake, then this would be the largest event to have been induced by fluid injection. Since 2015, Oklahoma has undergone wide-scale mitigation efforts primarily aimed at reducing injection volumes. Thus far in 2016, the rate of M3 and greater earthquakes has decreased as compared to 2015, while the cumulative moment—or energy released from earthquakes—has increased. This highlights the difficulty in earthquake hazard mitigation efforts given the poorly understood long-term diffusive effects of wastewater injection and their connection to seismicity.

Far‐field pressurization likely caused one of the largest injection induced earthquakes by reactivating a large preexisting basement fault structure

The Mw 5.1 Fairview, Oklahoma, earthquake on 13 February 2016 and its associated seismicity produced the largest moment release in the central and eastern United States since the 2011 Mw 5.7 Prague, Oklahoma, earthquake sequence and is one of the largest earthquakes potentially linked to wastewater injection. This energetic sequence has produced five earthquakes with Mw 4.4 or larger. Almost all of these earthquakes occur in Precambrian basement on a partially unmapped 14 km long fault. Regional injection into the Arbuckle Group increased approximately sevenfold in the 36 months prior to the start of the sequence (January 2015). We suggest far-field pressurization from clustered, high-rate wells greater than 12 km from this sequence induced these earthquakes. As compared to the Fairview sequence, seismicity is diffuse near high-rate wells, where pressure changes are expected to be largest. This points to the critical role that preexisting faults play in the occurrence of large induced earthquakes.

Precise Estimation of Repeating Earthquake Moment: Example from Parkfield, California

Abstract We offer a new method for estimating the relative size of repeating earthquakes using the singular value decomposition (SVD). This method takes advantage of the highly coherent waveforms of repeating earthquakes and arrives at far more precise and accurate descriptions of earthquake size than standard catalog techniques allow. We demonstrate that uncertainty in relative moment estimates is reduced from ±75% for standard coda-duration techniques employed by the network to an uncertainty of ±6.6% when the SVD method is used. This implies that a single-station estimate of moment using the SVD method has far less uncertainty than the whole-network estimates of moment based on coda duration. The SVD method offers a significant improvement in our ability to describe the size of repeating earthquakes and thus an opportunity to better understand how they accommodate slip as a function of time.

Seismological and geodetic constraints on the 2011 Mw5.3 Trinidad, Colorado earthquake and induced deformation in the Raton Basin

The Raton Basin of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico is an actively produced hydrocarbon basin that has experienced increased seismicity since 2001, including the August 2011 Mw5.3 Trinidad normal faulting event. Following the 2011 earthquake, regional seismic observations were used to relocate 21 events, including the 2011 main shock, two foreshocks, and 13 aftershocks. Additionally, interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) observations of both the 2011 event and preevent basin deformation place constraint on the spatial kinematics of the 2011 event and localized basin subsidence due to ground water or gas withdrawal. We find that the 2011 earthquake ruptured an 8–10 km long segment of a normal fault at depths of 1.5–6.0 km within the crystalline Precambrian basement underlying the Raton Basin sedimentary rocks. The earthquake also nucleated within the crystalline basement in the vicinity of an active wastewater disposal site. The ensuing aftershock sequence demonstrated statistical properties expected for intraplate earthquakes, though the length of the 2011 earthquake is unexpectedly long for an Mw5.3 event, suggesting that wastewater disposal may have triggered a low stress drop, otherwise natural earthquake. Additionally, preevent and postevent seismicity in the Raton Basin spatially correlates to regions of subsidence observed in InSAR time series analysis. While these observations cannot discern a causal link between hydrocarbon production and seismicity, they constrain spatial relationships between active basin deformation and geological and anthropogenic features. Furthermore, the InSAR observations highlight the utility of space-based geodetic observations for monitoring and assessing anthropogenically induced and triggered deformation.