{"id":24379,"date":"2015-07-02T10:20:39","date_gmt":"2015-07-02T15:20:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=24379"},"modified":"2015-07-02T10:20:39","modified_gmt":"2015-07-02T15:20:39","slug":"man-made-earthquakes-fact-or-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/07\/02\/man-made-earthquakes-fact-or-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Man-Made Earthquakes: Fact or Fiction?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AIu3b0WhMgs\" height=\"349\" width=\"620\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p><p>The team at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.revealnews.org\">Revea<\/a>l produced a nifty video on Oklahoma&#8217;s earthquake surge that shows, with entertaining visuals, the science of &#8220;induced seismicity&#8221; \u2014 the scientific mechanism that explains how disposal wells used by the oil and gas industry can trigger earthquakes.<\/p><p><!--more--><\/p><p>The video, produced by Ariane Wu, was based on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.revealnews.org\/episodes\/power-struggle-the-perilous-price-of-americas-energy-boom\/\">a reporting collaboration between myself and Reveal&#8217;s Michael Corey<\/a>. The prospect of human&#8217;s triggering earthquakes isn&#8217;t new, and <a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/topic\/earthquakes-2\/\">disposal wells<\/a> aren&#8217;t the only non-naturally occurring activity that has made the earth shake, Corey and Wu explain in a\u00a0<a style=\"font-size: 14px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.revealnews.org\/article\/man-made-earthquakes-fact-or-fiction\/\">web post<\/a> accompanying the video:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Large-scale geothermal power plants also can be a trigger for earthquakes, notably at\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.usgs.gov\/faq\/categories\/9827\/3374\">The Geysers<\/a>\u00a0in the California wine country.<\/p><p>And underground nuclear tests produce measurable seismic waves. In fact, much of what we know about the size and success (or failure) of North Korea\u2019s nuclear tests comes from seismologists\u2019 analysis of the small earthquakes the blasts triggered.<\/p><p>Man-made earthquakes are a well-documented phenomenon, and what\u2019s happening in Oklahoma is only the most extreme example to date. It\u2019s true that most of the earthquakes in Oklahoma have been small, but earthquakes are like a lottery you don\u2019t want to win. For every 10 earthquakes of magnitude 3.0, there\u2019s one 4.0. And if you have enough 4\u2019s, you\u2019ll eventually have a 5.<\/p><\/blockquote><p>In recent years, however, there has been a spike in unusual earthquakes in big oil and gas states, they write:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Other oil-producing states aren\u2019t so lucky. The U.S. Geological Survey has identified areas in eight states as having measurable levels of induced seismicity. (Translation: man-made earthquakes.) Those include parts of Texas, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arkansas, Alabama, Ohio and, of course, Oklahoma.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The team at Reveal produced a nifty video on Oklahoma&#8217;s earthquake surge that shows, with entertaining visuals, the science of &#8220;induced seismicity&#8221; \u2014 the scientific mechanism that explains how disposal wells used by the oil and gas industry can trigger earthquakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":24385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[490],"tags":[489,500,238,270,642],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24379"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24392,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24379\/revisions\/24392"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}