Fault (geology)

About: Fault (geology) is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 26732 publications have been published within this topic receiving 744535 citations.

Faulting Induced by Forced Fluid Injection and Fluid Flow Forced by Faulting: An Interpretation of Hydraulic-Fracture Microseismicity, Carthage Cotton Valley Gas Field, Texas

Abstract: We analyzed precisely located microearthquake data detected during five hydraulic fracture treatments in the Carthage gas field of east Texas. The treat- ments were conducted in two adjacent boreholes within interbedded sands and shales of the Upper Cotton Valley formation. The microearthquakes were induced within narrow horizontal bands that correspond to the targeted sandstone layers. Events throughout all the treatments show strike-slip faulting occurring uniformly along vertical fractures trending close to maximum horizontal stress direction. These events are consistent with the reservoir's prevalent natural fractures, known to be isolated within the sands and trending subparallel to the expected hydraulic fracture orien- tation. When this uniform fracture system was activated exclusively, the detected shear deformation, measured as the moment release per unit volume of fluid injected, was constant, independent of various fluid viscosities and flow rates used. Within the base of the Upper Cotton Valley formation, anomalous event counts and moment release occurred within dense clusters that delineate bends or jogs in the fracture zones. The mechanisms are also strike-slip, but the fault planes are more favorably oriented for failure. The dense clusters show location patterns diverging in time, suggesting the expulsion of fluids from compressive fault jogs. Fluid flow forced by the adjacent slip-induced loading appears to initially extend the treatments, but the loading also tends to lock up and concentrate stress at the jogs, as evident by fewer but larger events populating the structures as treatments progress. As a result, effec- tive drainage lengths from the boreholes may be shorter than would be inferred from the seismicity extending past the jogs. These high-moment asperities are similar to dense patches of seismicity observed along creeping sections of the San Andreas fault, where they have been attributed to localized zones of strength or stress con- centration, surrounded by larger regions undergoing stable, aseismic slip. This sim- ilarity, plus large moment deficits in terms of volume injected, suggests a large component of aseismic slip is induced by the Cotton Valley treatments.

The relationship between late Cenozoic tectonic events and stress field and basin development in northeast Japan

Abstract: The regional tectonic stress field, basin development, and crustal deformation of the NE Japan arc in the interval between 32 Ma to the Quaternary can be synthesized based on dike, vein, and fault orientation data, as well as on the compilation of the regional geology. An extensional stress field became prevalent from 32 Ma, and major normal faulting started at 25–20 Ma, which resulted from back arc rifting. Normal faulting, trending nearly parallel to the arc, propagated from the present Japan Sea coast to the forearc side, following the trenchward migration of the main volcanic field. From 20 to 15 Ma, normal faults with an oblique trend to the arc developed due to the counterclockwise rotation of NE Japan. The rapid clockwise rotation of SW Japan since 16 Ma produced a NW-SE directed transtensional stress regime in the NE Japan arc. Due to crustal stretching associated with this pull-apart movement, the back arc side of the NE Japan arc subsided rapidly to middle bathyal environments. After the termination of the opening of the Japan Sea at about 14 Ma, a neutral stress regime prevailed, which included phases of both weak extension and compression. Lithospheric cooling eventually led to thermal subsidence of the back arc region, and igneous underplating caused uplift of the axial zone of the volcanic arc. The increase in velocity of the westward motion of the Pacific plate at around 4 Ma produced strong compression across the arc, reactivating most of the Miocene normal faults, and uplifting the volcanic arc. The greatest crustal shortening occurred in areas that were stretched the most in the Miocene within the volcanic arc, which implies tectonic inversion.

A block model of distributed deformation by faulting

Abstract: It is clear from palaeomagnetic evidence that large and hitherto unexpected rotations about a vertical axis are common in regions of distributed continental deformation. We propose a simple two-dimensional model to illustrate how fault movement and block rotation within a zone of distributed deformation may be related to the relative motion of the rigid plates that bound the zone. One surprizing feature of this model is that the component of strike-slip motion on the faults within the deforming zone is in the opposite sense to the strike-slip component across the zone as a whole. Thus slip vectors within the zone are not the same as that between the bounding rigid plates: in contrast to deformation at oceanic plate boundaries. Examples of active fault geometries similar to those of our model can be seen in Greece, Iran and the western USA.

Kinematics and geometry of active detachment faulting beneath the Trans-Atlantic Geotraverse (TAG) hydrothermal field on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge

Abstract: Newly acquired seismic refraction and microearthquake data from the Trans-Atlantic Geotraverse (TAG) segment of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge at 26°N reveal for the first time the geometry and seismic character of an active oceanic detachment fault. Hypocenters from 19,232 microearthquakes observed during an eight month ocean bottom seismometer deployment form an ∼15-km-long, dome-shaped fault surface that penetrates to depths >7 km below the seafloor on a steeply dipping (∼70°) interface. A tomographic model of compressional-wave velocities demonstrates that lower crustal rocks are being exhumed in the detachment footwall, which appears to roll over to a shallow dip of 20° ± 5° and become aseismic at a depth of ∼3 km. Outboard of the detachment the exhumed lithosphere is deformed by ridge-parallel, antithetical normal faulting. Our results suggest that hydrothermal fluids at the TAG field exploit the detachment fault to extract heat from a region near the crust-mantle interface over long periods of time.

A reservoir analysis of the Denver earthquakes: A case of induced seismicity

Abstract: Injection of fluid wastes into the fractured Precambrian crystalline bedrock beneath the Rocky Mountain Arsenal near Denver triggered earthquakes in the 1960's. An analysis, based on the assumption that fluid flow in the fractured reservoir can be approximated by flow in a porous medium, is presented. The configuration and hydrologic properties of the reservoir are determined from two lines of evidence: (1) locations of earthquake hypocenters determined by seismic arrays installed at the Arsenal and (2) observed long-term decline in fluid levels in the injection well. Together these two sets of data indicate that a long, narrow reservoir, aligned in the direction N 60/sup 0/W, exists. The reservoir is 3.35 km in width, extends 30.5 km to the northwest and infinitely to the southeast, and spans a depth interval from 3.7 to 7.0 km below land surface. It has a transmissivity of 1.08 x 10/sup -5/ m/sup 2//s and a storage coefficient of 1.0 x 10/sup -5/. Computed pressure buildup along the length of the reservoir is compared with the spatial distribution of earthquake epicenters. The comparison shows that earthquakes are confined to that part of the reservoir where the pressure buildup exceeds 32 bars. This critical value is interpretedmore » as the pressure buildup above which earthquakes occur. The migration of earthquake epicenters away from the injection well, a phenomenon noted by previous investigators, can be accounted for by the outward propagation of the critical pressure buildup. The analysis is extended to examining the effects of rapid flow in fractures opened by high injection pressure. The results show that the effect is confined to a small region within 1 km of the injection well. The existence of a critical pressure buildup above which earthquakes occur is completely consistent with the theory on the role of fluid pressure in fault movement as presented by Hubbert and Rubey.« less