Investigating Earthquakes in Eagle Ford Using Earthquake Relocation and Moment Tensor Inversion
Presenter
Dr. Peng Li
Postdoctoral Fellow
Bureau of Economic Geology
Abstract
The Eagle Ford area has a long history of earthquake. During 2017 to 2019, TexNet deployed ~30 seismic stations and observed ~400 earthquakes in the Eagle Ford area. Analysis of the earthquakes can help understand the seismogenic structures of the Eagle Ford shale play and investigate their relation with anthropogenic activities. Taking advantage of the new dataset, we relocate all available earthquakes and invert moment tensor of ML > 2.0 earthquakes from 2017 to 2019 in the Eagle Ford area. We identify the active fault zone and analyze the fault information based on the relocation and moment tensor inversion results. Most of the earthquake are normal faulting earthquakes from moment tensor results. We also observed a few strike-slip earthquakes. We estimate Moment Magnitude (Mw) of all earthquakes in Eagle Ford using the linear relation between Local Magnitude (ML) and Mw , then calculate accumulation of energy released by earthquakes in Eagle Ford area.
