Earthquakes

There is a question of whether or not the Xiannu mountain Fracture Belt will will be affected by three gorges dam. The water held by this dam may trigger earthquakes. This would threaten millions of people. There is really no telling how the seismic faults in this area will react to the water held by the dam. The theory is that the weight of the water that is blocked by the dams can cause exsisting cracks in the Earth's crust to slip, resulting in earthquakes. The faults slip more often when a nearby reservoir is filled with water. An example is the Konya reservoir in turkey. This is the largest of ones on record and was a magnitude of 6.5. This earthquake killed 200 people in December 1967.

www.earthquakeplans.com/

A failure of the Three Gorges Dam would be one of the single most destructive events in history. The chance here is small but the risks are so large that this issue needs to be studied thourghly. There was a study being done in 1999 by Jeff Freymueller and Shusun Li of the Geophysical Institute that is being funded by Nasa. This will help to determine the Seismic affects os the Three Gorges dam. It was also noted by an article in Geotimes that the strongest possible earthquake in the area would be a 5.2. The Chinese say that the dam is built to withstand a magnitude 7.0.