The Guy-Greenbrier earthquake swarm occurred in
central Arkansas
Central Arkansas, also known as the Little Rock metro, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway Metropolitan Statistical Area, is the most populous metro area in the U.S. state of ...
beginning in August 2010.
The
epicenter
The epicenter, epicentre () or epicentrum in seismology is the point on the Earth's surface directly above a hypocenter or focus, the point where an earthquake or an underground explosion originates.
Surface damage
Before the instrumental pe ...
s of earthquakes in the swarm showed a linear distribution, with a clear overall shift in activity towards the southwest with time,
[ and the largest event in the swarm was the 2011 Arkansas earthquake, at 4.7 on the ]moment magnitude scale
The moment magnitude scale (MMS; denoted explicitly with or Mw, and generally implied with use of a single M for magnitude) is a measure of an earthquake's magnitude ("size" or strength) based on its seismic moment. It was defined in a 1979 pape ...
.
Cause
It has been suggested that the swarm was triggered by drilling activities associated with the exploration and production of shale gas
Shale gas is an unconventional natural gas that is found trapped within shale formations. Since the 1990s a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has made large volumes of shale gas more economical to produce, and some a ...
in the Fayetteville Shale
The Fayetteville Shale is a geologic formation of Mississippian age (354–323 million years ago) composed of tight shale within the Arkoma Basin of Arkansas and Oklahoma. It is named for the city of Fayetteville, Arkansas, and requires hydraulic ...
in northern Arkansas. Analysis of the swarm has found no link between this relatively shallow drilling and the earthquakes, but has instead suggested a link with deep waste disposal drilling similar to that identified at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal
The Rocky Mountain Arsenal was a United States chemical weapons manufacturing center located in the Denver Metropolitan Area in Commerce City, Colorado. The site was completed December 1942, operated by the United States Army throughout the late ...
in the 1960s, and has led to a moratorium on such drilling being proposed covering an area of .
See also
*List of earthquakes in 2010
Earthquakes in 2010 resulted in nearly 165,000 fatalities. Most of these were due to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, which caused an estimated 160,000 deaths, making it the 11th deadliest earthquake in recorded history. Other deadly quakes occurred i ...
*List of earthquakes in 2011
This is a list of earthquakes in 2011. Only earthquakes of magnitude 6 or above are included, unless they result in damage and/or casualties, or are notable for some other reason. All dates are listed according to UTC time. The 9.1 Tōhoku ear ...
*List of earthquakes in the United States
The following is a list of notable earthquakes and tsunamis which had their epicenter in areas that are now part of the United States with the latter affecting areas of the United States. Those in ''italics'' were not part of the United States whe ...
*Enola earthquake swarm The Enola earthquake swarm was a series of earthquakes in 2001 that centered on Central Arkansas
Central Arkansas, also known as the Little Rock metro, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Little Rock-North Littl ...
*Oklahoma earthquake swarms (2009–present)
The Oklahoma earthquake swarms are an ongoing series of human activity-induced earthquakes affecting central Oklahoma, southern Kansas, northern Texas since 2009. Beginning in 2009, the frequency of earthquakes in the U.S. state of Oklahoma rap ...
References
Earthquake swarms
Earthquakes in the United States
Natural disasters in Arkansas
2010 earthquakes
2011 earthquakes
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