U.S. Water News Online
WASHINGTON -- The discovery that earthquakes can affect the level of groundwater in wells, sometimes thousands of miles away, offers scientists a new opportunity to learn more about the planet's inner workings.
Though often recorded in earthquake lore, the relationship between quakes and water sources has not been thoroughly studied, earth scientists David Montgomery and Michael Manga point out in a review in a recent online issue of the journal Science.
In a look at reports of groundwater changes during quakes, the two found that major quakes can affect the level of wells over thousands of miles.
For example, they found that a magnitude 7.9 quake in Alaska last fall was associated with sloshing water in Lake Union near Seattle and New Orleans' Lake Ponchartrain. The quake was also blamed for muddy tap water the next day in Pennsylvania, where the water table dropped.
And the massive 9.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Alaska in 1964 was said to have affected wells 6,000 miles away.
``Wells in South Africa, clear on the other side of the world, responded. They didn't respond much, mind you, but the observations corresponded with the Alaska earthquake,'' said Montgomery, an expert on surface water at the University of Washington.
Manga, at the University of California, Berkeley, is an expert on subsurface water.
Surface water like rivers and streams responded to earthquakes that were closer than those that affected groundwater like wells and aquifers, they reported.
Their analysis can help scientists understand the broad range of earthquakes' effects on hydrology and should help guide the study of links between seismology and hydrology, Montgomery said in a statement.
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