Also under its crust, the Earth is altered by man

Also under the earth’s crust, man alters the planet. The injection of a large amount of water to extract hydrocarbons through fracking (hydraulic fracturing) causes earthquakes, although for now none of the magnitude of those registered in Türkiye and Syria in February, geologist Eric Sandvol told EFE.

In an interview on the occasion of Earth Day (April 22), the renowned professor of geology at the University of Missouri (USA) and expert seismologist responds like this when asked if the interior of the planet is so affected by human activities such as land surface, oceans and atmosphere.

The injection of high-pressure water, sand and chemical additives into the rock below the earth’s surface to open pathways through which hydrocarbons can flow by pumping has caused earthquakes in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and southern Kansas, he said.

No one has died, but in Oklahoma it caused damage to homes, he said of anthropogenic earthquakes, those produced by man, which also occur when dams are built.

“What we are not sure about is whether they can cause or lead to large earthquakes”asserts.

Technology to know more about the February earthquakes

Sandvol is set to travel to Turkey for an international mission to place 250 soda can-sized devices that are expected to shed light on the magnitude 7.8 and 7.5 earthquakes recorded two months ago.

Nine hours passed between one earthquake and the other, and together they caused the death of more than 50,000 people and injured 115,000, in addition to destroying buildings and other infrastructure.

With 14 million affected, they were truly the largest earthquakes in at least 200 years to hit that area of ​​Asia Minor. In the Mediterranean basin there was only one comparable earthquake in 1939, says Sandvol.

And also the doublet of earthquakes -the second was not an aftershock- had some oddities that science hopes to explain with the help of the technological tool from the company SmartSolo Inc., originally created for the oil industry.

Together with the University of Missouri, Georgia Tech and the Turkish Institute of Science and Technology are participating in this project, but also, according to Sandvol, the US Geological Survey is going to place hundreds of the “nodes” of SmartSolo in the earthquake zone.

“While normally we usually have about 40 or 50, now we will have between 300 and 400 of these instruments, because they are very easy to place (they are buried under the ground and do not need a support structure like seismometers) and in 10 minutes they are recording” , details.

The goal of the project is to gain insight into the composition of the devastated area and surrounding areas to help explain why the February earthquakes were unusually strong.

To a question about whether science has come to know the interior of the Earth as well as the exterior, Sandvol answers: “We know a lot about why earthquakes happen, but we can’t accurately predict when they will happen.”

In general, although there are some exceptions, the 90 either 95% of earthquakes occurs -he says- because the Earth is like a great puzzle where all the pieces fit together”.

When the largest pieces, the tectonic plates, move, friction and shocks occur and, as a consequence, ruptures or “faults”.

The devastated area of ​​Turkey and Syria lies on the Central Anatolian fault, the boundary between the Arabian and Anatolian plates.

It is a slip fault that does not have the characteristics of subduction faults, such as the one in Chile, where mega-earthquakes usually occur, he stresses.

It was also a rarity that the energy wave continued in a curve of the fault under a part of Turkey bordering Syria.

“When an earthquake hits a curve, the shaking typically stops and this did not happen here”Sandvol says.

In his opinion, it will probably never be possible to predict an earthquake with precision, that is, it will not be possible to “knowing the exact time, location and size”, but it is possible to improve the forecasts.

That means being able to “Give a probability of where future earthquakes will occur, but not predict exactly. It’s a really important distinction.”add.

In addition, people can be better prepared for the contingency of an earthquake and build anti-seismic buildings and modernize existing ones so that they can withstand strong earthquakes.

Colonial cathedrals in Latin America are a good example of resistance to earthquakes, just like traditional Japanese constructions due to the flexibility of the wood, he concludes.

Source: EFE