Moment Magnitude for Small Earthquakes in the Delaware Basin of West Texas and Southeast New Mexico, USA

Abstract The Delaware basin region of west Texas and southeast New Mexico has become one of the most prolific regions of seismic activity in the continental United States due to widespread hydraulic fracturing and wastewater disposal injection. In response to the increased number of earthquakes in this region, rapid and accurate characterization of earthquake sources is necessary to understand the evolution of seismic activity and level of seismic hazard associated with these earthquakes. This study re-evaluates magnitude for small earthquakes in the Delaware Basin using (1) moment-rate spectra derived from S-wave coda envelopes, and (2) a relative magnitude method that relies exclusively on the ratio of waveform amplitudes between highly correlated waveform pairs. The coda-envelope method produces accurate Mw estimates for small earthquakes (M 1.5–3) that are consistent with independent, waveform modeled moment magnitudes for events with Mw>3. Using the relative amplitudes method to extend these Mw magnitudes to many other events, we successfully provide relative moment magnitude (Mw,rel) values for 81% of the Texas Seismological Network catalog in the Delaware basin region and 45% of the U.S. Geological Survey Induced Seismicity Project’s catalog of events in southeast New Mexico. The adoption and integration of the calibrated Mw,rel method with current magnitude estimation methods offers valuable insights into the relationships between local and moment magnitude and will contribute to improved characterization of widespread induced seismicity.