Scientists are intentionally triggering earthquakes in Switzerland to figure out how to reduce the risks

Researchers have shaken the ground in southern Switzerland, triggering thousands of small earthquakes in a monitored environment, as they seek to discover seismic insights that could reduce risks.

“It was a success!” said Domenico Giardini, one of the project’s lead researchers, as he inspected a crack in the rock wall lining a narrow tunnel beneath the Swiss Alps.

Wearing an orange jumpsuit and helmet, the geology professor at the Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) turned on his headlamp to get a better look.

“We had seismic,” he said enthusiastically, explaining that the goal was “to understand what happens at depth when the Earth moves.”

Giardini was standing in the BedrettoLab that had been dug in the middle of a narrow, 5.2-kilometre-long ventilation tunnel leading to the Forca railway tunnel.

The underground laboratory, which is accessed by specially adapted electric cars that glide through the pitch black along concrete slabs laid over a muddy dirt floor, is the ideal location to create and study earthquakes, Giardini said.

“It’s ideal because we have a 1.5-kilometre mountain above us… and we can look closely at the faults, how they move, when they move, and we can make them move ourselves,” he said.

An aerial view of the entrance to the underground laboratory in the Swiss Alps.

Typically, researchers seeking to study earthquakes place sensors near known faults and wait.

By contrast, in Pedrito’s lab, researchers filled a pre-defined bug with sensors and other tools, then sought to stimulate movement.

For the experiment, called Fault Activation and Seismic Rupture (FEAR-2), dozens of scientists from across Europe spent four days in late April injecting 750 cubic meters of water into wells drilled into the tunnel’s rock walls, aiming to trigger a magnitude 1 earthquake.

“We’re not creating a new crack, we’re just making it easier to move,” Giardini said.

During the experiment, there was no one in the tunnel for safety reasons, and everything was managed remotely from the ETH Zurich laboratory in northern Switzerland.

During a visit to the Zurich lab the day after the experiment, scientists were excitedly discussing the first signs of earthquakes on the monitors.

“This is kind of pushing the boundaries of science,” said Ryan Schultz, a seismologist who specializes in human-caused earthquakes.

The excitement was interrupted by a sudden power outage in the tunnel, prompting scientists in Zurich to search for answers.

“We have our own seismic machine,” said Frederic Massine, a French seismologist and technical expert, as he studied his screen for clues about the cause of the power outage. “Now we have to play with the parameters.”

Wells piled up outside the BedrettoLab tunnel entrance.

The malfunction did not last long and pumping soon resumed.

In the end, about 8,000 small seismic events were triggered along the target fault, but also, surprisingly, along other faults perpendicular to the main fault, generating earthquakes ranging from -5 to -0.14.

“We didn’t reach our target size, but we got it just below it,” Giardini said.

This alone was a major success, he insisted, noting that while there had been previous efforts to create small earthquakes in laboratory settings, they had “never been this large and never been this deep.”

“It has simply never been tried.”

He said the results will help determine the best injection angles to reach volume 1 in BedrettoLab when researchers trial it next June.

Volume is measured on the Richter scale logarithmically, where each integer increment represents ten times the measured amplitude.

Sub-zero levels are still evident. Anyone standing near the fault during the largest earthquakes, at -0.14, would feel an acceleration of “1.5 G,” or 1.5 times the standard acceleration due to gravity, Giardini said.

He explained that they were going to fly “into the air with a big jump.”

(From left) ETH Zurich students Alba Zappone, Alessandro Profetta and Lu Tian examine cracks in the BedrettoLab tunnel.

Nothing was felt on the surface, and Giardini emphasized that by greasing an existing fault, the team was only adding “about 1% of the natural hazard.”

He insisted that the experiment was completely “safe.”

Giardini explained the importance of the research, stressing: “If we master how to produce earthquakes of a certain size, we know how not to produce them.”

This is particularly important in relation to underground activities such as drilling and extraction, he said, pointing as an example to earthquakes caused by wastewater disposal generated by the hydraulic fracturing industry in Texas, US.

He also highlighted the 5.4-magnitude Pohang earthquake that struck South Korea in November 2017, which was caused by water injection into the country’s first geothermal power plant.

“Without realizing it, they started injecting and releasing earthquakes onto a large fault, creating a very dangerous earthquake,” Giardini noted.

“We’re not saying we shouldn’t go underground,” he insisted.

“We need to learn how to do this more safely.” – Agence France-Presse

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