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Seismicity in Texas - What have we learned from reporting seismicity and applied seismicity research?
Alexandros Savvaidis
Abstract:
It is evident that in the south US mid-continent the seismicity currently reported is primarily related to oil and gas operations. In Texas, although the recorded earthquakes are of low to moderate magnitude, the rate of seismicity has been increasing since 2009. The TexNet Earthquake Observatory has catalogued 2000 M1.5+ earthquakes in Texas since January of 2017 occurring primarily in the Fort Worth Basin, the Eagle Ford play area of south Texas, and across the greater Permian Basin region, especially in the Delaware Basin.
Our research efforts have collected and compiled information on oil and gas operations including wastewater disposal (SWD) and are able to associate them with seismicity in parts of the State. In other areas we are able to develop strong spatiotemporal statistical linkages between the recent increase in seismicity rate and hydraulic fracturing operations (HF). However, although there are still areas that the causal factor(s) of seismicity is unclear we work on integrating all available data to understand and mitigate seismicity in Texas and therefore work on sustainability of our shale resource development.
ALEXANDROS SAVVAIDIS
Biography
Manager and Seismology Research Team Lead of the Texas Seismological Network (TexNet) and Center for Integrated Seismicity Research (CISR). Extensive 20 years experience in Ap- plied Geophysics and Engineering Seismology both through my research position as a Senior Researcher and collaboration with Industrial partners in multidisciplinary European and US funded projects. In addition, I managed the largest Seismographic Network in Greece, num- bering 100 real time accelerometers and 150 offline installations. My research activity and technical expertise is focused on, engineering seismology, Earth observation and disaster risk reduction, exploration, engineering, and environmental geophysics. My research on Seismology includes the study of source characteristics, the wave path and site characterization in case of an earthquake event, the real time acquisition of ground motion data, for earthquakes of tectonic or volcanic activity, Shakemaps implementation and data fusion for disaster risk mitigation. Additionally in Applied Geophysics my attention is directed towards acquiring, processing, and modeling geophysical data using passive and active seismic and electromagmetic techniques in urban and free field areas to reveal 1D, 2D and 3D earth models and to improve the knowledge in exploration, mining and three dimensional basin structure using geophysical methods. Also, I am an expert of surface wave data acquisition, processing and inversion for crustal modeling. For this I have applied different inversion algorithms through the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) in passive and active data in order to minimize the computational time.