through here watching things so i’ve
decided to completely change my talk but
in looking at it i am going to do some
things i love the improv so i’m going to
go fast forward fast back to fast
forwards I’m going to take advantage of
some of those thanks and what I want to
talk about today is maybe a little bit
about life and as we go through the path
in life the things that we think are
going to happen may not and in wondering
about where we may go and taking
advantage I’m an educator taking our
advantage in our minds and looking at
answering questions along the way and
I’m still struck by that x-ray with the
with the nail I had similar experience
my first year in college week 4 didn’t
know anybody we go on of the geology
field trip and I’m climbing on saw
obsidian and I cut my middle finger to
the bone and I’m profusely bleeding and
the instructor has a load everyone up in
the bus and we have to go to the
hospital they wait while I’m having our
sketch instead I’m wondering if I’m ever
going to have a career in earth sciences
so what what I want to do is I want to
start today and then I’m going to go
back in time and this is an editorial
from the dallas morning news on money
and it talks about earthquakes in Dallas
came to dallas in 1983 i studied nuclear
explosions and ground motion I didn’t
think I would study earthquakes here in
Dallas and so what I want to do is I
want to go back in time then and talk
about this story and talk about how it
involved science how it involves the
public and in talk about how we solve
problems and so that’s a that’s our goal
so well I teach one of the first year
intro classes that general science kids
have to take so they’re not all real
happy to be in their sign it’s
earthquakes and volcanoes they call it
shake and bake but it’s an opportunity
to end in the fall of 2008 I was
teaching that course and on Thursday
night we in Dallas had the first felt
earthquakes that have ever occurred in
150 years and I thought terrific well
had an opportunity tomorrow morning when
I go into class I can finally talk about
real-time earthquakes some of the
students had felt and what an
opportunity to bring it close to home
those that I know where that path could
go and so I want to take you through
that half this is just a picture of
earthquakes at hang there were about 100
earthquakes and you can see over the
course of from november until May there
were a series of sequences of
earthquakes that began to occur here in
the dallas area where we had never felt
earthquakes before um and so in that
thread that the students the idea was
well let’s go study those earthquakes
just because we won’t understand
something about them and so we got some
portal instruments we deployed
instruments out to try to locate the
earth works better than the USGS and
sure enough about May of that year this
outline right here is the DFW Airport
and so you know that the West East
runway in the West runway and when we
located those those earthquakes they all
occurred right here move the scale
that’s only like about a while and you
can see they let that little linear
trend osal or and they were all about
four and a half kilometers deep about
three miles team all on that little
little trend there if curious you know
what’s going on with look and so as we
began to look at these things these red
circles are all the producing wells on
the airport and then these will blue
squares are two places that when we
produce oil and gas we separate the oil
from the water and then we dispose of
the water amet was a wastewater injector
it just turns out to be right where that
location was again curious and so we go
a step further and the Texas Railroad
Commission keeps track of these kinds of
processes so this is up this is a
problem solving and until that
particular injector had begun injecting
water in the subsurface at about four
and a half kilometers deep on the
twelfth of sep tember and that first
earthquake again on the thirty-first of
october and then the earth began to
occur over this time period if we think
of earthquakes water can accelerate the
release of tectonic stress on existing
faults and so it over this time period
we came to conclude that possibly that
wastewater was triggering these
earthquakes we shared this data and you
can see that in this particular image in
August that that water well that
disposal well was abandoned so there was
a conversation of these process now
we’re going to take now this is a rewind
part so that’s 2008 so now we’re going
to rewind we’re going to rewind to 1975
and and we’re also going to take our
limbs and instead of looking at Dallas
we’re going to expand across the eastern
United States and so this map maybe some
of you if you’ve had a geology class
this is a map of the United States these
are earth quake hazardous across the
United States you can see the San
Andreas Fault of subduction you see this
broad tectonic region read the entire
risk from earthquakes when we look
the eastern United States and see that
in general the colors are much lighter
there’s less there’s quick risk and and
that’s because active tectonics doesn’t
play a stronger role in the eastern
United State and so as we look at
earthquakes in the eastern United States
this is the number Q lucky number of
magnitude three earthquakes from 1975 to
2015 I don’t give you’re a scientist or
who you are if you look at that plot
that looks like pretty much a linear
line so that means the same number of
earthquakes per year so 2923 from 1975
until about two thousand eight and in
2008 some people call this to hockey
stick but in 2008 we see this rapid rise
in size missing that rapid rise in
seismicity what’s what’s what’s the
cause I think we now are coming to a
conclusion that the same thing we saw
out of the DFW Airport is occurring
particularly to our neighbor to the
north and Oklahoma where they have over
an order of magnitude more water that
they have to dispose of and we have here
and that this may be related to the
disposal of waste water flutes okay I’m
going to go backwards again and so now
we’re going to go back to nineteen sixty
two so this lesson about wastewater
disposal and injection of earthquakes is
something that the literature and I
think this is a lesson for us all at
least in my mind makes me think about I
always need to be learning and thinking
about new things this is just south of
Denver Colorado at the Rocky Mountain
Arsenal and in 1962 of the US began to
dispose of this is millions of gallons
of chemical waste it was associated with
chemical weapons and and fortunately
they thought enough to put some seismic
stations in and they
number of earthquakes that were
occurring in the area as they dispose of
those fluids and so you can see the
rapid rise of injection the rise of
earthquakes the decay of injection decay
of earthquake the rise that k and you
can see that the earthquakes and the
fluids follow each other they stopped
there twice decay they don’t go away
they come back up again and so back 50
years ago this idea that will include
flow on defaults we can change the
effective stress that the the faults can
slip more easily just like us on a day
when we’re driving and the rain it’s a
rainy day and our tires to slip on the
folks now you go back to Texas 1975
today this is the number of earthquakes
and you can see the rise in earthquakes
in Texas and actually throughout the
state of objection so question why why
this why the sudden increase in in 2008
one of the wonderful technological
solution start our our energy problems
are this are these ideas of
hydrofracking breaking rock and
recovering oil and gas primarily gas
initially in these in these materials
and in providing us some energy
independence and these basins across the
United States of places where those
kinds of things are going on when we do
that we recover some water with that
with that oil and gaps and we have to
separate that water and that water is
very salty has lots of rhymes and so
typically we dispose of it underground
in most environments and that revolution
provided the opportunity for increased
disposal of fluids in a number of places
Texas and Oklahoma among those
as we’ve gone forward ok back to Texas
2008 what’s what’s happened since 2008
in Texas an area where the Fort Worth
basin were again going back to about
1850 we have no written records of any
earthquakes how we’ve had 3292 three
earthquakes over that period 1924 over
200 earthquakes now in the Fort Worth
Basin that have occurred so illustrating
that these this kind of increase in
earthquake activity that we see other
places is ongoing here for us and in dfw
we airport earthquakes were were here
we’ve had a sequence of earthquakes in
azle we’ve had a sequence of earthquakes
here on the border between dallas and
irving down here venus so all of these
yellow dots are earthquakes that are
ongoing the inner disel unanticipated at
out comes back from that night 30th of
october two thousand eight i was excited
this this is the path to try to
understand these things and i think it’s
a path that makes some of you felt these
events that all of us participating in
trying to understand and how to mitigate
these effects and even here in texas now
the state legislature has found this to
be important enough to generate
something called Tex net where state
funds are now going forward to begin to
try to assess these things and
understand this this linkage of induced
earthquakes so it’s a multi-disciplinary
it’s kind of exciting kind of thing in
that it involves people from industry
their understanding of these problems
and involves economic issues it involves
never know where you’re going to end up
and I don’t know how many of you opened
up the dallas morning news on sunday and
these two images were in Sunday morning
paper these are impact now of magnitude
4.8 earthquake and negative 5.6
earthquake the possibility of that on
the dallas-fort Worth area we live in an
area that historically has had no
earthquake hazards our building codes
are a little bit different than in
California and so it behooves this
whatever the cause always thinking about
what might be the implications to think
about these and so FEMA has run these
scenarios of a 94.8 95.6 just to put
this into one dot is 10 million dollars
worth of damage and and so these are
significant kinds of impacts now the
probability of these are low and so for
all of us as we try to think about
problem solving these locusts but
possible high outcome kinds of things
what should I think about what should I
what should be our problem solving
approach to to these kinds of efforts um
it’s a broad-based problem solving kinds
of thing we have to think of all the
consequences this morning we heard about
Richard Nixon and the consequences of
one single educational bill and so I
think that this is an example where we
have to be quantitative and what to
think about our feelings and think about
what the implications of increased
earthquakes are this is a a picture of
one of the largest crude oil terminals
in the United States it has a strategic
characteristic for the United States and
Cushing Oklahoma Vienna bring to you
where they’re been increased their quick
so it behooves us to think about what
are the problems how can we solve these
things interdisciplinary kinds of things
are the place that
not everyone agrees with all of the how
these how these different
interpretations go along the way but i
think that’s that’s the other lesson
that i come away with is we think about
problem solving this is a report that
involves the US oil and gas industry
involves regulators involved people like
me to study earthquakes trying to
understand what the implications are of
these events and so these are the kinds
of steps we don’t have all the answers
never in life do we always have all the
answers and that day I cut my finger I
wish I would have had the answer that I
had not put my hand on that obsidian
ledge when I reached up to those
processes but in my mind the opportunity
to try to solve problems in their
interdisciplinary way and so with that I
think I’m going to end except that in
the in the spirit of ted and i’ve never
given a TED talk as you can tell right
now yeah but I think in the spirit of
TED Talks the things that come at us in
life provide an opportunity to learn and
to discuss things and provide us a
bility to problem solve in this
particular case I’ve had the opportunity
to interact with other seismologist
other geologists political officials oil
and gas industry people people like you
of you who have felt the earthquakes and
I think by walking through those doors
we have opportunities to learn and
develop our understanding of the world which we live so thank