A comprehensive earthquake catalogue for northeastern British Columbia and western Alberta, 2014-2016

Abstract

To gain a better understanding of induced seismicity in northeast British Columbia and western Alberta, we conducted an intensive analysis of seismic data to locate earthquakes that occurred within the area of 52°N-61°N, 126°W-115°W for the years of 2014 through 2016. Continuous seismic waveforms from as many as 43 stations operated by various organizations in the region were used in this study. A total of 5478 events were identified and located; but only 4916 solutions were deemed acceptable by our quality criteria. The number of earthquakes in our final catalogue is approximately three times the base level of the Canadian National Seismograph Network catalogue. In this report, we describe in detail our location procedures and how each source parameter (origin time, epicenter, focal depth, and magnitude) is determined. The earthquake catalogue is summarized in a table, while the phase picking data for individual events are presented in an ASCII file as a supplement to this report. The total numbers of events in 2014, 2015, and 2016 are 1287, 1575, and 2057, respectively. The overall magnitude of completeness of our catalogue is ML 1.8, an improvement from the value of 2.3 for the CNSN catalogue.

Induced Seismicity Driven by Fluid Diffusion Revealed by a Near‐Field Hydraulic Stimulation Monitoring Array in the Montney Basin, British Columbia

“…Therefore, many seismic signals have already been detected before the application of MMF. However, the total detection of 814 events (Table S2) is a significant improvement over the 28 earthquakes reported for the same time period using only the regional stations (Visser et al, ), clearly demonstrating the advantage of dense array coverage.…”

“…Yellow bars: daily event number of jointly detected by a multistation STA/LTA approach and matched‐filter detection in our study area (814 in total). Blue bars: daily event number reported by Visser et al () of the same area (28 in total). Pink shaded areas: operation periods of five hydraulic fracking wells (HF1–5) marked in Figure .…”

“…For example, the number of M3+ events increased threefold from 2008 to 2015, including the 2015 M4.6, the 2018 M4.5, and the 2019 M4.6 earthquakes referenced above. While the seismic response to pumping has been vigorous in some places, the sparse permanent regional network is only capable of detecting earthquakes with magnitudes larger than ~M L 2.5 (Visser et al, ), making it difficult to perform detailed analyses of hazard near individual wells (or groups of wells).…”

“…Diamonds with thick black edges indicate wells active during the station deployment period (28 May 2015 to 15 October 2015). Black/white dots: 1,108 earthquakes during/outside MG deployment period, between 1 January 2014 and 31 December 2016 cataloged by Visser et al (). Star represents the 17 August 2015 M W 4.6 hydraulic fracturing‐induced earthquake near Fort St John.…”

Bilinear Magnitude‐Frequency Distributions and Characteristic Earthquakes During Hydraulic Fracturing

“…https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GL079746 Figure 1. Map of earthquake epicenters in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin recorded in an earthquake catalog from 2014 to 2016 (Visser et al, 2017). White square denotes the location of the study area.…”