Triggered Swarms and Induced Aftershock Sequences in Geothermal Systems

Abstract:

Natural geothermal systems, which are used for energy generation, are usually associated with high seismic activity. This can be related to the large-scale injection and extraction of fluids to enhance geothermal recovery. This results in the changes of the pore pressure and pore-elastic stress field and can stimulate the occurrence of earthquakes. These systems are also prone to triggering of seismicity by the passage of seismic waves generated by large distant main shocks. In this study, we analyze clustering and triggering of seismicity at several geothermal fields in California. Particularly, we consider the seismicity at the Geysers, Coso, and Salton Sea geothermal fields. We analyze aftershock sequences generated by local large events with magnitudes greater than 4.0 and earthquake swarms generated by several significant long distant main shocks. We show that the rate of the aftershock sequences generated by the local large events in the two days before and two days after the reference event can be modelled reasonably well by the time dependent Epidemic Type Aftershock Sequence (ETAS) model. On the other hand, the swarms of activity triggered by large distant earthquakes cannot be described by the ETAS model. To model the increase in the rate of seismicity associated with triggering by large distant main shocks we introduce an additional time-dependent triggering mechanism into the ETAS model. In almost all cases the frequency-magnitude statistics of triggered sequences follow Gutenberg-Richter scaling to a good approximation. The analysis indicates that the seismicity triggered by relatively large local events can initiate sequences similar to regular aftershock sequences. In contrast, the distant main shocks trigger swarm like activity with faster decaying rates.