New type of earthquake discovered

A Canadian-German research team have documented a new type of earthquake in an injection environment in British Columbia, Canada. Unlike conventional earthquakes of the same magnitude, they are slower and last longer. The events are a new type of induced earthquake that have been triggered by hydraulic fracturing, a method used in western Canada for oil and gas extraction. With a network of eight seismic stations surrounding an injection well at distances of a few kilometers, researchers from the Geological Survey of Canada, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and McGill University recorded seismic data of approximately 350 earthquakes. Around ten percent of the located earthquakes turned out to exhibit unique features suggesting that they rupture more slowly, similar to what has previously been observed mainly in volcanic areas.

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