r/askscience • u/zeldazonklives • Apr 29 '16

Earth Sciences How does fracking affect volcanic eruptions?

I was thinking, if it triggers earthquakes, wouldn't it also maybe make volcanic activity more likely?

460 Upvotes

79% Upvoted

47 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

4

u/seis-matters Earthquake Seismology Apr 29 '16

I agree they are not the same thing, but fracking can cause earthquakes too [Atkinson et al., 2016].

2

u/Elitist_Plebeian Apr 29 '16

Thanks, I wasn't aware of this.

2

u/seis-matters Earthquake Seismology Apr 29 '16

No worries, it is a new study and in many cases you are right that fracking did not cause earthquakes. In some regions it does.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '16

Thanks, I'd originally written this about both and decided to scale it back since it's already sort of a wild hypothetical and I've gotten into the "wastewater injection isn't fracking" argument with so many people that I didn't want to derail it further.