Anthropogenic triggering of large earthquakes

Abstract

The physical mechanism of the anthropogenic triggering of large earthquakes on active faults is studied on the basis of experimental phenomenology, i.e., that earthquakes occur on active tectonic faults, that crustal stress values are those measured in situ and, on active faults, comply to the values of the stress drop measured for real earthquakes, that the static friction coefficients are those inferred on faults, and that the effective triggering stresses are those inferred for real earthquakes. Deriving the conditions for earthquake nucleation as a time-dependent solution of the Tresca-Von Mises criterion applied in the framework of poroelasticity yields that active faults can be triggered by fluid overpressures , 0.1 MPa. Comparing this with the deviatoric stresses at the depth of crustal hypocenters, which are of the order of 1–10 MPa, we find that injecting in the subsoil fluids at the pressures typical of oil and gas production and storage may trigger destructive earthquakes on active faults at a few tens of kilometers. Fluid pressure propagates as slow stress waves along geometric paths operating in a drained condition and can advance the natural occurrence of earthquakes by a substantial amount of time. Furthermore, it is illusory to control earthquake triggering by close monitoring of minor ‘‘foreshocks’’, since the induction may occur with a delay up to several years.