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Temporal patterns of induced seismicity in Oklahoma revealed from multi-station template matching

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Abstract

Over the past decade, Oklahoma became the most seismically active region of the mid-Continental USA as a result of industry operations. However, seismic network limitations and completeness of earthquake catalogs have restricted the types of analyses that can be performed. By applying multi-station template matching on the 23,889 cataloged earthquakes in Oklahoma and Southern Kansas between late-2008 and 2016, we increased the number of detected earthquakes to 209,409 events. While the improved catalog produced an order of magnitude events than the original catalog, the frequency-magnitude distribution remains similar to the original catalog. We found that the coefficient of variation of interevent times in small spatial bins tends to spatially correlate with the location of M ≥ 4 earthquakes. The improved catalog reveals the pervasiveness of swarm-like patterns in seismicity across the entire study region. The rapid increase in seismicity rate of these swarms in 2013 coincided with a reduction in the calculated p values (power law decay rates) before and after larger events. We also used the catalog to revisit the temporal patterns in the four M ≥ 5 sequences, finding more active foreshock behavior than previously recognized and variations in aftershock behavior. When compared against poroelastic stress models for the Pawnee and Fairview sequences, the catalog shows an improved correlation with stress that accounts for variable-rate injection, supporting the conclusion that injection rate is an important contributor to seismic hazard.

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Acknowledgments

All waveform data were obtained through the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology Data Management Center (IRIS) (www.iris.edu; last accessed April 2017). Earthquake catalogs were obtained from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) National Earthquake Information Center (NEIC) (http://earthquake.usgs.gov/data; last accessed April 2017) and the Oklahoma Geological Survey (http://www.ou.edu/ogs.html; last accessed April 2017). Well data were retrieved from FracFocus (https://fracfocus.org; last accessed April 2017). This research benefited from discussions with A. Barbour, E. Cochran, H. DeShon, W. Ellsworth, P. Friberg, O. Kaven, A. Michael, J. Norbeck, W. Rish, J. Rubinstein, D. Shelly, and D. Sumy. This manuscript was improved thanks to G. Beroza, R. Habiger, A. Holland, A. McGarr, J. Rubinstein, and J. Shemeta. Our analysis relied heavily on Miami University’s High Performance Computing, and we thank B. Koby and J. Mueller for their assistance.

Funding

Support for this work was provided by NSF (EAR-0847688) and USGS NEHRP (2015-0176, 2016-0124).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. U.S. Geological Survey, Earthquake Science Center, 345 Middlefield Rd., Menlo Park, CA, 94025, USA

    Robert J. Skoumal

  2. Department of Geology and Environmental Earth Science, Miami University, 118 Shideler Hall, 250 S. Patterson Ave., Oxford, OH, 45056, USA

    Michael R. Brudzinski, Brian S. Currie & Rosamiel Ries

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  1. Robert J. Skoumal
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  2. Michael R. Brudzinski
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  3. Brian S. Currie
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Correspondence to Robert J. Skoumal.

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Highlights

•We increased the number of cataloged earthquakes in Oklahoma between 2008 and 2016 by roughly an order of magnitude

•This improved catalog allows individual sequences and regional seismicity patterns to be analyzed in greater detail

•We find more foreshock activity prior to M ≥ 5 earthquakes, pervasive swarminess, and high coefficients of variation

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Skoumal, R.J., Brudzinski, M.R., Currie, B.S. et al. Temporal patterns of induced seismicity in Oklahoma revealed from multi-station template matching. J Seismol 24, 921–935 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-019-09864-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-019-09864-9

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