As if life in the modern world wasn’t scary enough, scientists from the US Geological Survey have concluded that human activity is causing a significant increase in earthquakes in the US.
In its seismic hazard forecast report for 2016, the USGS has included “human-induced” earthquakes for the first time. Most of the earthquake activity is predicted to be associated with hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
Fracking is the process of injecting water, sand, and potentially toxic chemicals into rock to release stored shale gasses. Wastewater from the process is then forced under high pressure into disposal wells. Environmental groups have protested fracking for years, claiming that the process is a direct cause of earthquakes. While industry spokespersons have long denied these claims, it seems that the federal government has now acknowledged that they are, in fact, true.
The addition of this “human induced” earthquake activity has significantly increased the predicted number of earthquakes for the upcoming year. According to Mark Petersen, who heads the USGS National Seismic Hazard Mapping Project, this is particularly true in parts of Oklahoma and Kansas, where fracking is a booming industry. The Dallas area is also expected to see a great increase in earthquakes in the next year, as are parts of Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Arkansas.
The study predicts that up to 7.9 million Americans face a risk of a damaging earthquake just from fracking. This number does not take into the count the millions who are at risk from natural earthquakes.
While predictions indicate that the earthquakes caused by fracking would not reach the level of devastation of West Coast quakes, they could do significant damage to property and infrastructure. In fact, earthquakes of magnitude 5.6 and 5.3 have occurred in areas adjacent to fracking operations. Of course, since this is the first time that the USGS has included human caused earthquakes in its report, none of these risks have yet been taken into account in building codes or city planning.
Now that the USGS has decided to publish an earthquake prediction report every year, rather than its former practice of publishing every 50 years, maybe the public will wake up to the fact that life is risky enough. We don’t need to encourage an industry that is literally fracturing the earth on which we stand.
Featured image by Tim Evanson via Flickr. Available under a Creative Commons License 2.0
