The Lake Erie earthquake study finds no clear link to rising waters

Ann Arbor, Michigan – More study is needed to develop any link between a recent bout with rising water levels in Lake Erie and an increasing number of earthquakes under and around the lake over the past decade, researchers say.

University of Michigan researchers said this week they couldn’t find a smoke gun in their efforts to link seismic activity off the Ohio coast to the recent period of upwelling in the Great Lakes, during which Lake Erie broke an all-time record.

“It is not possible to prove a definitive correlation between earthquake rate and water level or the rate of water level change,” said geophysicist UM Yihe Huang, co-author of a study published May 9 in Seismological Research Letters.

This effort was started by the June 2019 earthquake about 20 miles off the coast of Cleveland. The 4.0-magnitude quake was felt as far away as Michigan.

In the same month, Lake Erie reached 574.61 feet (above sea level), the highest water level ever recorded.

The research team reviewed 437 earthquakes between 2013 and 2020 — all smaller than the 2019 earthquake and unlikely to be noticed by people on shore — but they were unable to find a relationship with lake levels.

The lake has been hit by a series of small, shallow earthquakes this year, which experts believe may be aftershocks of the 2019 earthquake. The most recent of which was a 1.2-magnitude earthquake on February 9 near the port of Fairport.

The Great Lakes region is generally considered to be seismically inactive, and earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or greater are rare. However, earthquakes greater than 2.0 occur two or three times a year in the region, particularly around Lakes Erie and Ontario.

Earthquakes ranging from 2.5 to 3.0 are the smallest earthquakes that are generally felt by people.

“We are not sure whether faults in the Lake Erie region can produce destructive or even fatal earthquakes,” said Huang, who is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Imperial University. “That’s why seismologists are interested in studying the sequence of a type 4 earthquake from this region.”

Since the early 2010s, eastern Ohio has seen a significant increase in the frequency of relatively small earthquakes. The origins of earthquakes are not well understood, but some studies suggest that they can be attributed to wastewater injection activities and hydraulic fracturing activities.

Injection-induced earthquakes have also been suggested as a trigger for the region’s recent 5-magnitude earthquake, which occurred in January 1986 east of Cleveland.

The new study team found a cluster of earthquakes in the vicinity of the 1986 earthquake and near wastewater disposal wells that were operating during the study period. They concluded that this group of earthquakes “may have been caused by sewage disposal.”

“Most interestingly, the 1986 earthquake was also occurring during another period of high water levels recorded across the Great Lakes,” the authors wrote. “However, given the large distance relative to Lake Erie, it would be difficult to assess the effect of the lake-induced stress change on causing the 1986 earthquake.”

The study team plans to continue their efforts this year.

“We cannot completely rule out the effect of the water level increase on the reactivation of faults that hosted the 2019 Ohio earthquake sequence,” said study lead author Dongdong Yao, a former UM Postdoctoral Research Fellow who is currently at China University of Geosciences.

“Our results highlight the necessity of more intense and closer seismic monitoring of the lake to further investigate the effect of changing water loading on shallow fault reactivation in this region,” Yao said.

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As the Great Lakes erupt, coastal regions face a reckoning

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