Legion Troll
A fine upstanding poster
About 7 million Americans live in areas of the central and eastern United States that could experience a damaging earthquake in 2016 that was caused by human activity such as wastewater disposal from gas production.
For the first time, the U.S. Geological Survey has published an earthquake hazard map pinpointing potential sites of both man-made and naturally occurring earthquakes.
The USGS reported that almost all the risk of increasing man-made quakes is tied to "companies that are injecting wastewater from gas and oil production down to porous rocks far below ground."
On Tuesday morning, just hours after the report came out, Oklahoma experienced two more quakes with a magnitude of 4.1 and 4.2.
"In the past five years, the USGS has documented high shaking and damage in areas of these six states, mostly from induced earthquakes," Petersen added. "Furthermore, the USGS Did You Feel It? website has archived tens of thousands of reports from the public who experienced shaking in those states, including about 1,500 reports of strong shaking or damage."
The USGS reports that the central part of the country has experienced the most dramatic increase in seismic activity over the past six years.
Between 1973 and 2008, there was an average of 24 earthquakes with a magnitude of 3.0 or higher each year.
The rate increased steadily in the relatively short amount of time between 2009 and 2015, averaging 318 earthquakes per year. This peaked last year, with 1,010 earthquakes.
So far this year, there have been 226 earthquakes of a magnitude of 3.0 or larger in the central U.S. as of mid-March.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/usgs-man-made-earthquakes-pose-risk-to-7-million-americans/