Arkansas Earthquakes Could Be Man-Made

oxide7 writes "The small earthquakes that struck north central Arkansas could be from a combination of natural and man-made activity. Some experts think that pumping water into the ground as part of the extraction process of natural gas could cause local seismic events."

Comments

Re:Top 5 Ways to Cause a Man-Made Earthquake

[MrNemesis]

For an even more impressive example, read about the Vajont Dam in Italy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam

An engineering marvel for its time, the dam was built based on shoddy geology - there was a faultline running up one side of the adjacent mountain. In a nutshell, filling up the dam forced water into the fault, which eventually caused half the mountain to fall into the dam. The dam was well built enough to not break - but the water spilled out over the top and killed about 2000 people.

However, the hand-wringing of the article is a bit unwarranted. It's well known that pumping stuff in and out of rock is bound to cause seismic instabilities. Magnitude 4-5 stuff (assuming they mean moment magnitude? They don't say) is generally considered small fry.