%0 Journal article
%A Kemna, Kilian B.
%A Roth, Marco P.
%A Wache, Ricarda M.
%A Harrington, Rebecca M.
%A Liu, Yajing
%T Small Magnitude Events Highlight the Correlation Between Hydraulic Fracturing Injection Parameters, Geological Factors, and Earthquake Occurrence
%R 10.1029/2022GL099995
%J Geophysical Research Letters
%V 49
%N 21

%I 
%X Hydraulic fracturing (HF) operations are widely associated with induced seismicity in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. This study correlates injection parameters of 12,903 HF stages in the Kiskatinaw area in northeast British Columbia with an enhanced catalog containing 40,046 earthquakes using a supervised machine learning approach. It identifies relevant combinations of geological and operational parameters related to individual HF stages in efforts to decipher fault activation mechanisms. Our results suggest that stages targeting specific geological units (here, the Lower Montney formation) are more likely to induce an earthquake. Additional parameters positively correlated with earthquake likelihood include target formation thickness, injection volume, and completion date. Furthermore, the COVID‐19 lockdown may have reduced the potential cumulative effect of HF operations. Our results demonstrate the value of machine learning approaches for implementation as guidance tools that help facilitate safe development of unconventional energy technologies.
%U http://resolver.sub.uni-goettingen.de/purl?gldocs-11858/11431
%~  FID GEO-LEO e-docs