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Scientists are working to understand the cause of the Great Lakes earthquakes

Scientists are working to understand the cause of the Great Lakes earthquakes

 


It was a Friday like many others for John Patterson, a history teacher in Jefferson, Ohio. He was in front of his students when the school building started shaking.

“It looked like people were working on the roof, but it was January, so that can’t be the case,” he said.

He was right. It was not workers, but a 4.9 magnitude earthquake, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the Lake Erie region.

While the Patterson experiment occurred 36 years ago—on January 31, 1986—this earthquake isn’t the only earthquake in the Great Lakes region, particularly around Lake Erie.

In the first six weeks of 2022, seven earthquakes were recorded in the eastern basin of Lake Erie. More than 200 earthquakes have been recorded since 1776 in Ohio, most of them around Lake Erie.

Seismic activity rarely exceeds 3.5 degrees, but there have been a few earthquakes that moderate 4.0. In 2019, for example, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources detected a 4.2-magnitude earthquake off Lake Erie. This was the fifth earthquake to break 4.0 in Ohio since 1986.

Scientists are working to find out why.

Causes of earthquakes

More complex monitoring systems may contribute, in part, to the height of the recorded earthquakes, but this technology does not take into account the underlying cause or the difference in the magnitude of the earthquakes.

Lake Erie has more seismic activity than other Great Lakes because there are more faults there, said Yihe Huang, associate professor of geophysics, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan.

Ohio has more faults than Lake Erie.

While fault lines in the Great Lakes may not be like the more well-known lines in the American West, scientists say they still play a role in contributing to seismic activity.

“Most faults in Ohio and the Midwest are buried deep under sedimentary rock and glacial soil,” said Jeff Fox, a geologist and seismologist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. “The faults are left by ancient weaknesses in the upper crust of the Earth from prehistoric tectonic activity such as the accretion of the Appalachian mountain range.”

But he said the causes of these earthquakes near Lake Erie are not fully understood. “Ohio does not sit on or near the boundary of tectonic plates,” Fox said, which usually leads to seismic activity.

Test Theories

Huang hypothesized that differences in the lakes contribute to the earthquake.

“My hypothesis is that the water level is changing,” she said, which could affect the frequency and intensity of the earthquake. She joined forces with Fox and other experts to test this hypothesis.

Their findings were published in May in a peer-reviewed article “Earthquakes around southern Lake Erie during 2013-2020 in relation to the lake’s water level” published in the journal Seismological Research Letters.

This study was prompted by the 2019 Lake Erie earthquake that registered 4.2 and produced several aftershocks. This particular incident occurred after a significant increase in water levels in the Great Lakes region and the highest water level ever recorded was in Lake Erie.

Separate research by a team at Michigan Technological University predicted that the water level in Lake Erie will rise by 28 centimeters by 2050 due to factors related to climate change.

To test the association of water level with earthquakes, the researchers first classified 437 relatively small Lake Erie earthquakes that occurred between 2013 and 2020,

Then, according to a University of Michigan press release, “the researchers calculated the stresses at which changing Lake Erie water levels might cause faults in the rocks under the lake, and used various statistical methods to look for associations between seismic rates and water levels.”

The results of the study were inconclusive, and the researchers called for more work to either determine or rule out a relationship between Lake Erie water levels and seismic activity.

Now, Huang and her colleagues at the University of Michigan are planning follow-up studies, using a fiber-optic cable to detect patterns of weaker seismic activity in Lake Ontario as well as running simulations of water level fluctuations in faults in the Lake Erie region.

Fox said the Ohio Department of Natural Resources is also working to increase its ability to monitor activity and find answers in patterns.

“Ohio has 26 seismic network stations that continuously record earthquake activity and alert seismologists in real time, 24/7/365,” he said.

In addition, the Ohio Geological Survey has a seismic recording station at Lake Erie Bluffs Park in Lake County and plans to add stations in Ashtabula and Lake counties.

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Featured image: A map showing the frequency of the devastating earthquake that shook all parts of the country. (Image source: USGS)

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