Stress Drops for Potentially Induced Earthquake Sequences

Abstract:

Stress drop, the difference between shear stress acting across a fault before and after an earthquake, is a fundamental parameter of the earthquake source process and the generation of strong ground motions. Higher stress drops usually lead to more high-frequency ground motions. Hough [2014 and 2015] observed low intensities in “Did You Feel It?” data for injection-induced earthquakes, and interpreted them to be a result of low stress drops. It is also possible that the low recorded intensities could be a result of propagation effects. Atkinson et al. [2015] show that the shallow depth of injection-induced earthquakes can lead to a lack of high-frequency ground motion as well.

We apply the spectral ratio method of Imanishi and Ellsworth [2006] to analyze stress drops of injection-induced earthquakes, using smaller earthquakes with similar waveforms as empirical Green’s functions (eGfs). Both the effects of path and linear site response should be cancelled out through the spectral ratio analysis. We apply this technique to the Guy-Greenbrier earthquake sequence in central Arkansas. The earthquakes migrated along the Guy-Greenbrier Fault while nearby injection wells were operating in 2010-2011. Huang and Beroza [GRL, 2015] improved the magnitude of completeness to about -1 using template matching and found that the earthquakes deviated from Gutenberg-Richter statistics during the operation of nearby injection wells. We identify 49 clusters of highly similar events in the Huang and Beroza [2015] catalog and calculate stress drops using the source model described in Imanishi and Ellsworth [2006]. Our results suggest that stress drops of the Guy-Greenbrier sequence are similar to tectonic earthquakes at Parkfield, California (the attached figure). We will also present stress drop analysis of other suspected induced earthquake sequences using the same method.