A recent study by UCSC, Caltech and the USC’s Induced Seismicity Consortium (ISC) suggests likely connection between waste water injection and an earthquake swarm that occurred at the southern end of San Joaquin valley in 2005. Thomas Goebel, of UCSC and a contributor to ISC, was the first author of the paper published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) in early February and is part of a series of articles investigating the potential for injection-induced seismicity in California. Earlier studies by Caltech and the USC’s Induced Seismicity Consortium showed that induced seismicity is expected to contribute only marginally to the total seismicity rate in California, which is dominated by tectonic earthquakes (click here for paper).The GRL paper showed that induced seismicity may be connected to induced pressure increase along seismically active faults which is of large importance in tectonically active regions. The study received much attention from the public including several newspaper articles, such as the LA times (click here for article), and also a radio interview show (click here for interview).
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