Human activity ‘caused quake’

A major earthquake in Spain that killed nine people was triggered by groundwater extraction, research suggests.

The magnitude 5.1 tremor struck the historic town of Lorca in south-east Spain in May last year.

In addition to the lives lost, buildings were reduced to rubble, cars flattened and more than 100 people injured.

Now scientists say they have evidence the disaster was man-made — the result of water being sucked out of the ground to feed domestic supplies.

Loss of the water caused stress changes in the earth’s crust along a major faultline, it is believed.

The disturbance was enough to trigger a rupture in the rock, leading to the earthquake.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, highlight the extent to which human activity can influence seismic shocks.

Scientists led by Dr Pablo Gonzalez, from the University of Western Ontario in Canada, used satellite data to map the ground deformation caused by the Lorca earthquake.

They then carried out computer simulations of the fault slip. The results showed a pattern that correlated with stress changes due to loss of groundwater.

Since the 1960s, natural groundwater levels in the region fell by 250 metres.

The findings implied that “anthropogenic activities could influence how and when earthquakes occur”.