Seismic moment

Physics

Geology

Mathematics

Mechanics

Oceanography

Seismology

Fault (geology)

Moment (physics)

Geotechnical engineering

Deformation (meteorology)

Volume (thermodynamics)

Geometry

Hydraulic fracturing

Classical mechanics

Thermodynamics

Scaling

Geophysical Research Letters

The cumulative seismic moment is a robust measure of the earthquake response to fluid injection for injection volumes ranging from 3,100 to about 12 million m 3 . Over this range, the moment release is limited to twice the product of the shear modulus and the volume of injected fluid. This relation also applies at the much smaller injection volumes of the field experiment in France reported by Guglielmi et al. (2015, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab0476 ) and laboratory experiments to simulate hydraulic fracturing described by Goodfellow et al. (2015, https://doi.org/10.1002/2015GL063093 ). In both of these studies, the relevant moment release for comparison with the fluid injection was aseismic and consistent with the scaling that applies to the much larger volumes associated with injection‐induced earthquakes with magnitudes extending up to 5.8. Neither the microearthquakes, at the site in France, nor the acoustic emission in the laboratory samples contributed significantly to the deformation due to fluid injection.

Injection‐Induced Moment Release Can Also Be Aseismic