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| Goal of the report | This report descibes the earthquakes recorded by the seismograph stations of the Lower-Saint-Lawrence/North-Coast regions between January 1st and December 31, 2001. |
| Performance of the local network |
The Lower-Saint-Lawrence/North-Coast region
monitored by a local networkof 5 seismic stations: MNQ (Manicouagan), CNQ(Côte-Nord),
ICQ (Islets-Caribou) et SMQ (Sainte-Marguerite).
Between July 5 and October 24, a temporary station was in operation
close to tank SM-C3. This station made it possible to record
several hundreds of small earthquakes, the majority not-collected by
the national network because they were much too weak (all under magnitude 1,7).
The local network is integrated into the Canadian National Seismographic Network. The uptime for these stations was very acceptable in 2001, ranking over 90%. Data from this station is continuously archived on optical disk Taking into account the distribution of stations in the Canadian network, any event with magnitude 2.0 or higher would be located. |
| Recorded earthquakes |
About 94 earthquakes were recorded as shown in the map and described in the list.
Besides some isolated and low magnitude events, the large majority of them occurred inside the recognized seismic zone of the Low-Saint-Laurent. |
| Felt earthquakes | According to the reports of citizens and journalists, three earhquakes were felt locally. One must however note that it occurred close to Harbour-St-Pierre on the Lower Norther-Coast, therefore little to the east of the zone covered by the map. |
| Blasts | Many explosions related to work of the Sainte-Marguerite project (SM-C3) were detected. Their nature was confirmed by Hydro-Quebec with Bay-Comeau or their characteristic signatures. These explosions do not appear on the map and list above. |
| Induced earthquakes |
Nine events magnitude 1,0 and more could have been induced by the
variations of water level of the Sainte-Marguerite-3 tank. Consult
the list for more details. One must
note that these events have all their point of origin fixed at an
average position. With the assistance of a localised temporary
station close to the tank, we could detect several hundreds of small
earthquakes between July 5 and October 10, 2001.
No earthquake was detected near the large tanks of HydroQuébec. |
Back: Earthquakes in Quebec and surrounding regions in 2001
Author: Maurice Lamontagne, ing.
File: GS-2140-4
