ODESSA, Texas — With earthquakes becoming the norm in West Texas, TexNet decided to put a seismic activity reader right in the middle of all the action, University of Texas Permian Basin.
“They needed a station to be placed in Odessa because of increased activities in the region and UTPB is preferred because we have a geoscience department on campus," Sumit Verma, assistant professor in geophysics said.
The seismic reader will do a few things.
“It’s recording the movement that’s happening on the earth’s surfaces,” Verma said.
That data will help researchers with TexNet and in the UTPB Geoscience department figure out one thing: are earthquakes in the Basin becoming more common because of fracking?
“In Oklahoma earthquakes have been correlated with humans because of drilling activities," Verma said. "But here that has not been established because we have not recorded enough data about it.”
Researchers hope to discover why the Basin is seeing an influx in earthquakes.
The data from the seismic reader is open to the public. The link to those numbers can be found here.