Man-Made Earthquake Now Confirmed, Experts Investigate

First Posted: Sep 24, 2016 05:49 AM EDT
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Mother Nature sometimes sends us natural calamities such as earthquakes. As many have known, it causes severe damage such as trembling of buildings, grounds opening, and death for humans. But, investigation reveals that the earthquake that happened in Texas is man-made due to injection of wastewater in the ground.

A team of geophysicists from Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, headed by William Ellsworth, long suspected that the 4.8 magnitude earthquake that hits East Texas in 2012 is manmade. It is the largest earthquake to be recorded in the said state.

To investigate the researchers used an Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar or InSar, which helped them to measure the grounds deformation. They established the device near the well where the earthquake occurred in East Texas. The device will use the satellite radar to observe tiny centimetre-scale changes that are happening to the surface of the earth, according to Stanford News.  

The experts explore the town of Timpson in Texas where the earthquake centered in 2012. They studied the nearby high-volume wells in the east and west of Texas that were used for disposing of wastewater. The wells begin its operation around 2005 and 2007. It has injected almost 200 million gallons of wastewater per year underground since it started.

Results show, according to The Colombus Dispatch.com, the Eastern well were shallow and the satellite radar shows that it is not the cause of the earthquake. But, the Western part of the well shows that the link between the stiff rock and the impermeable "blocking formation" above allows the pore pressure to rise and shift downwards. Those movements triggered the quake in 2012.

In line with this, Ellsworth shared that, when the injection of the wastewater decreased the shaking of the ground stops. Thus, he added "Part of the solution is how we manage this problem if we get the pressure to go down at depth, the earthquakes stop," in a report by Yahoo News.

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