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Reservoir-induced seismicity in high seismicity region—a case study of the Xiaowan reservoir in Yunnan province, China

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Abstract

This paper discusses the spatiotemporal pattern of seismicity during the impoundment of the Xiaowan reservoir area, Yunnan Province, China, in the period from May 21, 2005 to December 31, 2012. The filling operations took place in five phases, starting on December 16, 2008. A notable increase in seismicity was only observed during the third filling phase, starting on July 15, 2010. Seismicity increase was mostly localized within two clusters, located to the northwest and west of the dam. Seismicity rates in these clusters showed a significant correlation with the water level increase, with the seismicity starting to increase when the water level reached the area covered by the two clusters, which additionally support they were induced by the reservoir impoundment. We further investigate source parameters for 44 pre-impoundment earthquakes and 164 post-impoundment earthquakes with M L ≥ 2.0. Corner frequencies, seismic moments, and stress drops are obtained based on the spectral analysis of regional data, upon corrections for geometrical spreading, frequency-dependent Q, and site effects. Our results show that during the post-impoundment phase reservoir-induced seismicity (RIS) inside the two clusters have systematically lower stress drops with respect to those occurring at further distance, and surrounding natural tectonic earthquakes, by a factor of about two to three times, suggesting a possible source characteristic that differentiate reservoir-induced seismicity from natural tectonic earthquakes. However, temporal stress drops changes within the clusters cannot be resolved. To compare the difference in stress drop between RIS and natural tectonic earthquakes, not only the difference in stress drop due to different region, but also the temporal change of background stress level even in the same region should be taken into account.

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Acknowledgments

The reviews and suggestions by two anonymous reviewers for improving the manuscript are greatly appreciated. We are also thankful to editor in chief Mariano Garcia-Fernandez for editing the paper. This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation (41174051) and the Special Research Project in Earthquake Science, China (201208003). We thank Earthquake Administration of Yunnan Province for providing us these data used in this paper. All of the maps were plotted using Generic Mapping Tools (Wessel and Smith 1998).

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  1. CEA Key Laboratory of Earthquake Prediction, China Earthquake Administration, Institute of Earthquake Science, Beijing, 100036, China

    Wei Hua, Zhangli Chen, Sihua Zheng & Chunqing Yan

  2. Earthquake Administration of Yunnan Province, Kunming, 650224, China

    Hong Fu

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  1. Wei Hua
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Correspondence to Wei Hua.

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Hua, W., Fu, H., Chen, Z. et al. Reservoir-induced seismicity in high seismicity region—a case study of the Xiaowan reservoir in Yunnan province, China. J Seismol 19, 567–584 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-015-9482-3

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