Hi All. My, how one little earthquake can start a buzz of questions and a search for answers.

It seems that the 4.4Mw earthquake in Enola, Arkansas has gotten a lot of peoples attention. This mainshock was followed by about 2500 aftershocks above ambient nose level on a continuously recording broadband seismograph deployed in the epicentral area for about 2 months. The occurrence rate of aftershocks does not appear to have an Omori temporal decay, but fluctuates greatly with time.

The location of the main shock from regional networks, and preliminary locations of aftershocks from the portable network are closely coincident with the location of a remarkable swarm of earthquakes that took place in the early 1980s.

The earlier swarm produced over 30,000 quakes over a 3 year period. This new swarm however has not provided any answers to the questions the last swarm generated. Some of the questions are, what is the source volume of these quakes. What tectonic structures and processes may be active in this region, which appears tectonically inactive at the surface? What processes could account for the remarkable richness of numbers of aftershocks produced, and why does the area seem to produce theses swarms in the first place?

A good number of question for which I’m sure answers are being sought. Take Care…Don in creepy town

Eos.Trans.AGU, 82(47), Fall Meet. Suppl., Abstract #####-##, 2001