Earthquake caused by groundwater extraction
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Government
Scientists studying the fault beneath the Spanish city of Lorca say that groundwater removal may be implicated in a deadly 2011 earthquake there.Theyreport in Nature Geosciencethat those shifts correlate with locations where water has been drained for years.
The study highlights how human activity such as drainage or borehole drilling can have far-reaching seismic effects.That the slippage happened at a depth of just 3km explains why the fairly mild Magnitude 5.1 quake caused so much damage in the area.
The team went on to study potential reasons for the slippage, finding that the water table in the adjacent Alto Guadalentin basin had dropped by some 250m over the last 50 years as water was drained for irrigation in the region.
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