Tiny seismic rumbles can warn that human activities such as fracking are putting enough stress on underground faults to trigger a larger earthquake.<\/p>\n
Analyses of a decade of seismic data from Alberta\u2019s Western Canada Sedimentary Basin shows that 92 percent of earthquakes induced by fracking were preceded by smaller foreshocks, researchers report August 27 in Science<\/em>. But there are many lingering uncertainties about why and how these foreshocks occur, the team notes. That means that, while still useful as short-term warnings, foreshocks may produce both false positive and false negative earthquake predictions.<\/p>\n