Published December 31, 2010 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Deciphering hydrochemical information provided by saline springs in the Carpathians bend area: no strong Vrancea earthquake expected to occur earlier than 2012

Creators

  • 1. Emil Racoviţă Institute of Speleology of the Romanian Academy
  • 2. Sabba Ştefănescu Institute of Geodynamics of the Romanian Academy
  • 3. Institute for Marine Geology and Geoecology GeoEcoMar
  • 4. Emil Racoviţă” Institute of Speleology of the Romanian Academy

Description

Abstract. Several natural groundwater discharges in Vrancea seismic area were inferred to originate in the mixing between two distinct end-members: seasonally variable inflows of meteoric freshwater, and deep-origin saline fluids of a remarkably constant composition. However, prior to two rather strong Vrancea earthquakes (mb = 5.8 and 5.3 respectively), the composition of the saline end-members appeared to significantly change as well. The approximate durations of the corresponding anomalous precursory periods, of 18 months and 10 months respectively, were apparently directly correlated to the magnitudes of the ensuing earthquakes. Consequently, it has been assumed that an earthquake of magnitude 5.8 or larger was expected to occur no earlier than 18 months after a last series of “un-perturbed” samples; in particular, since the concerned springs samples collected on May 2010 exhibited no abnormal signatures, it seems unlikely that a strong Vrancea earthquake would occur sooner than 2012.

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