Does Dams Causes Earth Quakes ?

Question

Does Dams Causes Earth Quakes ?

Answer 1

noo thts nt  bt earthquakes makes dams collpase

Answer 2

Yes reservoir of dams sitting on bedrock with faults can cause EQ.

bedrocks with large amount of mural joints (3 directional) can trigger EQ.

Answer 3

Ignore all of the previous answers. Please don't take this rudely, People, but if you don't KNOW the answer to something, please don't attempt to answer it unless you clearly state your source or state that it's your opinion.

I'm an earthquake engineer, and I deal with this stuff on a daily basis. Yes, building dams does cause the local seismicity to increase, particularly in areas that are already seismically active. Now, I'm not talking large earthquakes (i.e. "macro-seismicity"), but I'm talking swarms of really small earthquakes (i.e. "micro-seismicity"). There's a few theories why. The first is that the sheer weight of the body of water alters the stresses deep in the bedrock, causing it to adjust and shift the stresses a little bit (...hence, an earthquake). Another theory is that the increased elevation head (i.e. potential energy of the water) increases the pore water pressure deep in the bedrock. This increase in pore water pressure alters the stresses a little bit, triggering small earthquakes. My personal opinion is that it's a little bit of both.

This was a pretty big problem when they built the Hoover dam. Some of the quakes from the micro-seismicity were pretty large (i.e. 4.0+) and they feared that it would damage the dam. Fortunately, they didn't cause any major damage.

Most dams today need to be filled on a slow and gradual schedule, and one of the main reasons for this is to hopefully avoid triggering a large earthquake.

Answer 4

no but Earthquakes cause dams to collapse.  Earthquakes are mainly caused by the sudden fracture of a plate (mostly happen near fault boundaries) or a huge asteroid which can cause shock-waves if it breaks the plate it lands on.

Answer 5

It possibly could.

To construct damns you need to dig the earth so you could fix the large metal structures into the earth. Sometimes, the digging may cause the tectonic plates to move [it doesn't generally happen but it could] and it cause earthquakes.

OR, construction of dams could cause floods which could cause landslides and finally result in an earthquake

Answer 6

Dams not really, reservoirs created behind dams have been alleged to cause minor earthquakes - reservoir induced seismicity, earthquakes as swarms of micro seismic events. there is no unanimity on RIS.

thnks

Answer 7

I don't think so,only if the water moves underground an then forces the inward land to tear open.