Are earthquakes something to worry about in Colorado?

Whether it’s hail, wildfires, or hurricanes, Colorado has its fair share of natural disasters. But what about earthquakes? Louise Watson, of Bailey, is one of several people who reached out through the Colorado Wonders to ask about seismic activity here. The answers were not far off.

Golden, Colorado is home to the National Earthquake Information Center, which is located on the campus of the School of Mines. Scientists there monitor seismic activity around the world, around the clock, and take calls from people who feel the vibration.

Seismologist William Yeke explained that Colorado is not the epicenter of major earthquakes, nor is it immune to them. Sometimes it is the result of human activity.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Ryan Warner: In general, are we shakin’ places?

William Yeke: We don’t have seismic activity as you see in some areas. Where we actually see a high seismic risk is where the plate boundaries are. For example: ca. Most people have heard of the San Andreas Fault which marks the plate boundary between the Pacific Plate and the North American Plate. It already creates a high seismic hazard. There are a lot of earthquakes there. In Colorado, we don’t have any such plate tectonic boundaries. So we don’t see that separate line of earthquakes that you might see in other areas.

Warner: Are all the flaws related to the paintings?

Yeck: No, they aren’t. So we have flaws all over Colorado. Most of them are really small flaws. This is true anywhere in the United States. There are flaws everywhere. Only in most cases slip rates are very, very small and these errors can be very, very small. So you don’t see big earthquakes. When we have earthquakes far from the plate boundary like this, we refer to them as overlapping earthquakes. So in Colorado, we have those overlapping earthquakes, but then really, when we look at the seismic activity and we log it, we see that it’s spread out across the state.

Warner: In general public terms, what might trigger the Colorado earthquake? And let’s talk about natural causes first. We’ll get into the idea that people can cause earthquakes in a bit.

Yeck: Even though we’re far from the boundary of tectonic plates, we still have a tense crust. This pressure travels away from the boundary of the plate, and there can also be local changes that change the pressure within the surface. And any time there’s pressure on something wrong, it’s likely to slip. So the error is just a plane in the ground. And when it slips we feel an earthquake.

Warner: What was the largest earthquake recorded in Colorado history?

Yeck: Historically, the largest earthquake we have evidence of was in 1882, with a magnitude of 6.6. But that was before we could actually record seismic activity on seismographs and accurately detect the location and magnitude of an earthquake. So for this earthquake, we had to rely on sensory reports – or what people describe and the shaking – to try to estimate where it happened.

Warner: Felt Reports. Is this how people feel?

Yeck: Exactly. And there’s a lot of reliance on the news for that…what the newspapers said about the event. From the intensity of the shaking, we can say that it occurred somewhere in north-central Colorado.

Warner: What is the closest town you can identify?

Yeck: We don’t have a very good location, but it would be west of Fort Collins.

An earthquake hazard map shows peak ground accelerations with a 2 percent chance of exceeding them in 50 years, for a stable rocky location. The map is based on the most recent USGS models of the contiguous United States (2018), Hawaii (1998), and Alaska (2007). The models are based on seismic and slip rates, and take into account the frequency of earthquakes of different magnitudes. Locally, the risk may be greater than indicated, because the geology of the site may amplify ground movements.

Warner: What about the last years?

Yick: In the past few decades, the largest earthquake of magnitude 5.3 that occurred in 2011, southwest of Trinidad, was CO. So that was an earthquake where we actually think it’s related to human activity. There are natural earthquakes happening in that area, but there has also been sewage injection. This event may be caused by human activity.

Warner: That’s part of the fact that people can cause earthquakes. This makes me feel incredibly powerful, by the way, William!

Yeck: Yes. I mean, Colorado actually has one of the richest history of human-caused earthquakes by injecting wastewater. Some people may remember, in the 1960s, there was a series of earthquakes that occurred in the Denver area, and that were due to the injections at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal. This was actually the first case we’ve seen sewage injection cause earthquakes.

Warner: Wastewater injection, what does it mean?

Yeck: Well, it’s whatever water people want to get rid of and inject it deep into the ground to get rid of. So in the modern era, this mostly pertains to oil and gas and is usually a by-product of oil and gas extraction.

Warner: I know, too, that there have been some underground nuclear tests near Rawison, Colorado that have had some earthquakes.

Yeck: Right. So a lot of seismology as a field, a lot of development, came from observing nuclear explosions, because when there’s a nuclear explosion or any explosion, it creates seismic waves. We can record them and estimate the magnitude of earthquakes. Colorado has a lot of areas where we see these human-caused earthquakes. So the Raton Basin is one of them. This is an area where we also see natural earthquakes. In Paradox Valley, induced earthquakes have occurred since about 1991 from fluid injection, from a project of the Bureau of Reclamation. Then we saw the Denver-area earthquakes in the 1960s. At Rangely, there’s actually an experiment where we tested the increased pressure at depth and saw that we could cause earthquakes. And then in Greeley, Colorado, recently, we saw some small earthquakes caused by fluid injection.

Warner: So are we smart enough to know how to prevent it from happening when injecting wastewater? Or is this a bit of a crapshoot still?

Yeck: It’s a really difficult problem because we know there are flaws in the subsoil, but often we don’t know exactly where they are. So Oklahoma is a good example where we’ve seen a lot of fluid-injected earthquakes. And we found that we don’t really know where all the flaws are.

Warner: Did you have an earthquake, Will?

Yeck: I’ve never felt an earthquake. It’s embarrassing being a seismologist. But I’d love to feel one at some point. Unfortunately, Colorado is probably not the best place to get a chance to feel an earthquake.

Warner: Which naturally leads to the question of why the National Seismic Information Center is in Colorado. Probably the best place to get it is away from a lot of seismic activity?

Yeah. I mean, there’s a long history about why the center is in Colorado. But you are certainly right that staying away from a major seismic hazard is an important part of conducting a process that can continue to operate in the event of an earthquake.

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