Oh, these fun little tangents...
We had a little quake here in SanFran again 6:30ish this morning that woke me up, so of course I had to go check and see once I got up. Sure enough, a couple of fun little tremors in the area. I never can help checking other things out and I noticed that Oklahoma was the most active region in the country so far today. Curiosity piqued, so off to dig into USGS historical data. Of course we've all heard about fracking and its concerns; I was just playing with data looking for possible trends.
Just checking records back to 1974 for the shown region surrounding and
including Oklahoma we've gone from an average of a little over seven
quakes per year in that area from 1974 through 2009 to a climbing
average of almost 614 per year since 2010. Considering we're at about
755 by last count so far this year, if activity stays consistent they're
on track to clear 3,000 by the end of 2015. Serious growth in
activity!
Of course, I'm curious to go digging after news stories to find out what was going on in the area during those anomalous years like the late 80's. The area is obviously a bit less tectonically stable and I'm curious to exactly why(I find this to be an erroneous statement now...plate tectonics look to play a minor role in the middle of the North American plate!). I'll see if I can post up a three-screen screenshot.
Thoughts? I will probably expand on this as I make time. It'd be really fun to work as a data detective...
Data collected from USGS.GOV - I urge you to go play with it!
UPDATE - July 7, 2015
I had to go in and take another peek at this region as it has been a little over three months since I wrote this article. There had been 755 measurable earthquakes in the time frame between 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC and 2015-04-01 23:46:25 UTC. As of 2015-07-07 17:09:52 UTC there are now 1,623 measured earthquakes for the same region. The odd thing is that on the map the regional data are now missing. When I make time...
UPDATE - March 19, 2016
Just watched Gasland II again. It was nice to have reaffirmed that someone else is still looking at quake activity. What gets me is quake history. I know I need to dial in exact coordinates, but a rough look at the same area I wrote about in the beginning of this little blurb yielded a total of "4283 earthquakes in map area" according to the USGS. That is only slightly more than double the previous year. Only slightly. For Oklahoma. Now I'm curious about fault likes back there...
©2015, 2016 Michael Pichahchy
Of course, I'm curious to go digging after news stories to find out what was going on in the area during those anomalous years like the late 80's. The area is obviously a bit less tectonically stable and I'm curious to exactly why(I find this to be an erroneous statement now...plate tectonics look to play a minor role in the middle of the North American plate!). I'll see if I can post up a three-screen screenshot.
Thoughts? I will probably expand on this as I make time. It'd be really fun to work as a data detective...
Data collected from USGS.GOV - I urge you to go play with it!
UPDATE - July 7, 2015
I had to go in and take another peek at this region as it has been a little over three months since I wrote this article. There had been 755 measurable earthquakes in the time frame between 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC and 2015-04-01 23:46:25 UTC. As of 2015-07-07 17:09:52 UTC there are now 1,623 measured earthquakes for the same region. The odd thing is that on the map the regional data are now missing. When I make time...
UPDATE - March 19, 2016
Just watched Gasland II again. It was nice to have reaffirmed that someone else is still looking at quake activity. What gets me is quake history. I know I need to dial in exact coordinates, but a rough look at the same area I wrote about in the beginning of this little blurb yielded a total of "4283 earthquakes in map area" according to the USGS. That is only slightly more than double the previous year. Only slightly. For Oklahoma. Now I'm curious about fault likes back there...
©2015, 2016 Michael Pichahchy
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