Unprecedented quiescence in resource development  area allows detection of long-lived latent seismicity

Salvage, Rebecca O.; Eaton, David W.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-765-2021

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-765-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Social seismology – the effect of COVID-19 lockdown measures...

https://doi.org/10.5194/se-12-765-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 12, issue 3

Research article

|

31 Mar 2021

Research article |

| 31 Mar 2021

Unprecedented quiescence in resource development area allows detection of long-lived latent seismicity

Rebecca O. Salvage and David W. Eaton

Data sets

EON-ROSE, International Federation of Digital Seismograph Networks University of Calgary https://doi.org/10.7914/SN/EO

Model code and software

SeismoRMS - A simple python/jupyter notebook package for studying seismic noise changes (Version 1.0) T. Lecocq, F. Massin, C. Satriano, M. Vanstone, and T. Megies https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3820046

Short summary

Small earthquakes in Alberta and north-east British Columbia have been previously ascribed to industrial activities. The COVID-19 pandemic forced almost all these activities to stop for ~ 4 months. However, unexpectedly, earthquakes still occurred during this time. Some of these earthquakes may be natural and some the result of earthquakes > M6 occurring around the world. However, ~ 65 % of the earthquakes detected may be the remnants of previous fluid injection in the area (latent seismicity).