Rethinking historical models of induced seismicity in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, Canada: Is brine disposal to blame?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
<!--!introduction!--> Although most wells in Alberta have no correlation with induced earthquakes, the Rocky Mountain House Seismogenic Zone (RMHSZ) defies this trend. The RMHSZ is a long-lived (1970’s to present) cluster of induced earthquakes located in west-central Alberta, Canada that has attracted attention following a stark increase in the regional seismicity rate after 2014. Seismicity in the RMHSZ has historically been linked to two mechanisms: poroelastic effects from gas production from the Strachan D3-A pool, a fractured Devonian reef; and natural earthquakes related to thrust faulting. The recent resurgence of seismicity brings the previously accepted poroelastic model into question, as gas production from the gas pool has ceased; new evidence suggests a nearby brine disposal scheme may be the culprit. This region is predisposed to favor induced seismicity from fluid injection based on overall sedimentology, diagenetic history, and complex structure, leading to increased seismic risk. Publicly available fluid injection data provided by geoSCOUTTM reveals the operator of the injector wells switched to a stratigraphically higher dolomitic zone, the Devonian Wabamun Group, in 2013; this timing coincides with the increase in seismicity. We investigated the strength and nature of the relationship between recent seismicity and the production and injection history of nearby wells in the RMHSZ by applying a cross-correlation algorithm to injection volumes and earthquake counts. We found that recent seismicity does correlate with brine disposal in space and time; this method can be applied to other retroactive seismicity studies. On-site earthquake monitoring at RMHSZ should be undertaken in the future.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".