Premium
Temporal and spatial correlations between soil CO 2 flux and crustal stress
Author(s) -
Camarda Marco,
De Gregorio Sofia,
Di Martino Roberto M. R.,
Favara Rocco
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: solid earth
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.983
H-Index - 232
eISSN - 2169-9356
pISSN - 2169-9313
DOI - 10.1002/2016jb013297
Subject(s) - induced seismicity , crust , geology , flux (metallurgy) , tectonics , seismology , stress (linguistics) , active fault , geophysics , materials science , linguistics , philosophy , metallurgy
In seismically active areas, tectonic stress deforms and breaks the rocks of the crust. Ongoing deformation produces detectable modifications in the shallower portions of the crust, resulting in a wide variety of changes in several parameters. In this paper, we report the results of a large‐scale spatial (across an area of 15,000 km 2 ) and temporal (up to 3 years) investigation of the relationship between active crustal stress and soil CO 2 flux. We deployed a network of 10 automatic stations in most of the seismically active districts of southern Italy to monitor the soil CO 2 fluxes, and we used seismicity data to track crustal stress. The results of the investigation show that the CO 2 flux signals varied independently in the districts with low and sporadic seismicity. Conversely, in the only district with nearly continuous seismic activity, almost all of the CO 2 flux signals were well correlated with each other, and we recorded a clear synchronous sharp increase of the seismicity and signals recorded by several stations. The high spatial and temporal correlation between seismicity and gas discharge evidenced in this study prove that the crustal stress associated with the seismogenic process is able to effectively modulate the gas release in a seismically active area.