Impact of Channel-Like Erosion Patterns on the Frequency–Magnitude Distribution of Earthquakes

rohmer, j. ; aochi, h.;

Reactive flow at depth (either related to underground activities, like enhancement of hydrocarbon recovery andCO2 storage, or to natural flow like in hydrothermal zones) can alter fractures’ topography, which might in turn change their seismic responses. Depending on the flow and reaction rates, instability of the dissolution front can lead to a wormhole-like pronounced erosion pattern. In a fractal structure of rupture process, we question how the perturbation related to well-spaced long channels alters rupture propagation initiated on a weak plane and eventually the statistical feature of rupture appearance in frequency–magnitude distribution (FMD). Contrary to intuition, a spatially uniform dissolution is not the most remarkable case, since it affects all the events proportionally to their sizes leading to a downward translation of FMD: the slope of FMD (b-value) remains unchanged. The parameter–space study shows that the increase of b-value (of 0.08) is statistically significant for optimum characteristics of the erosion pattern with spacing to length ratio of the order of ∼1/40: large-magnitude events are more significantly affected leading to an imbalanced distribution in the magnitude bins of the FMD. The larger the spacing, the lower the channel’s influence. Besides, a spatial analysis shows that the local seismicity anomaly concentrates in a limited zone around the channels: this opens perspective for detecting these eroded regions through high-resolution imaging surveys.