Big Surprise: Ohio Earthquakes Definitively Linked to Fracking

Earthquakes in Ohio? Never – before fracking. Then, in March 2014, a swarm of 77 earth tremors were recorded in Ohio between March 4-12, 2014. When a magnitude 3 quake shook up a lot of people in nearby towns, state officials shut the well down – and the quakes stopped.

Still, there was doubt and denial on the part of industry officials about whether there really was a direct cause-and-effect relationship between injecting water, sand, and chemicals – under high pressure – into the earth and the swarm of quakes that shook up nearby residents’ sense of well-being. Now a new study published in the January 5, 2015 issue of the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America removes all room for equivocation.

The author of the study, Robert Skoumal, a grad student in seismology at Miami University in Ohio is developing a technique called ‘earthquake fingerprinting’ that will make…