Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Scientists Link Deep Wells To Deadly Spanish Quake

Posted by timothy on from the better-tell-those-guys-in-russia dept.

Meshach writes "Research has suggested that human activity triggered an earthquake in Spain that killed nine and injured over three hundred. Drilling deeper and deeper wells to water crops over the past 50 years were identified as the culprit by scientist who examined satellite images of the area. It was noted that even without the strain caused by water extraction, a quake would likely have occurred at some point in the area but the extra stress of pumping vast amounts of water from a nearby aquifer may have been enough to trigger a quake at that particular time and place."

8 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Span? by aitikin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Where the hell is Span?

    --
    "Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
  2. In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Research has suggest that in most cases, murder is directly related to getting out of bed.

  3. It's too complicated for me to understand ... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From TPA:

    Research has suggested that human activity triggered an earthquake

    Umm ...

    It was noted that even without the strain caused by water extraction, a quake would likely have occurred at some point in the area

    Please pardon me, perhaps I am being too dense to understand the following intricacies:

    How can it be that "Human activity triggered an earthquake" when a quake "would likely have occurred at some point in the area" ?
     

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
    1. Re:It's too complicated for me to understand ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Translation: Humans cause it to happen *earlier* then it would have occurred naturally. They acted as the last triggering point rather then the natural stress buildup.

      Adding stress when stress is already slowly building up is the same as this example.

      A cup put underneath a running faucet. You adding extra water into the cup causing it to spill. That means that you caused it to spill, even if we know the cup would spill anyways due to the running faucet.

      As for if this was a bad thing or not, who knows. It's possible that the extra stress could have cause the earthquake to be weaker then it would have been if it just slowly buildup to even higher levels. It could have also make the quake stronger compared to say if it naturally just caused several quakes instead of 1 giant one. Since it didn't occur naturally, it's all what ifs at this point.

    2. Re:It's too complicated for me to understand ... by khallow · · Score: 1, Insightful
      Draining a water basin leads to actual, serious problems such as desertification and subsidence of land. One doesn't need to invent new risks.

      While naturally-occurring erosion would've done the same job eventually, I just helped it along with some human-caused erosion.

      Or maybe you didn't and the boulder fell when it would have fallen anyway. Correlation isn't causation and all that.

  4. Attention All Humans! by sycodon · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Stop! Drop whatever it is you are fucking doing RIGHT NOW because whatever it is, some scientists you are going to fuck some other shit up.

    Just freeze and don't move, or we're all going to fucking DIE!

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  5. Drilling deeper and deeper. by Z00L00K · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That also means that they are consuming more water than what is replenished each year, which in the long run may be a more important issue than a quake every 25 years or so.

    --
    If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    1. Re:Drilling deeper and deeper. by Herve5 · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Indeed, this is the kind of fact that that is at the same time disclosed and unknown, or maybe we don't want to know, or then it's buried in the many and silly non-informations in the Ecology area.

      Emptying regional aquifers to raise cherries one month before the other European countries has been a national sport in Spain for dozens of years.
      And this clearly results in documented papers which show all the other cultures (orchards...) had to be progressively abandoned, in favor of less and less demanding crops.

      I remember one guy listing the successive crops his region switched to, by order of increasing robustness vs drought. It seems the only next step now is desert-resistant varieties. One can imagine how food capacity follows the track.

      Why this kind of paper albeit true doesn't make news headlines is a mystery for me. Maybe there are too many others. Maybe nobody is interested in knowing which crops are raised in this remote area. Maybe there are more flashy e-co-lo-gi-cal news, that leave you think one can solve it all by taking quick a decision now.
      Spain depleted aquifers for 50 years is an issue nobody can quickly solve now, we only can decide to change during the next 50 years.
      And 50 years is no interesting horizon to politicians, and maybe to many of us...

      --
      Herve S.