Investigation of mining-induced earthquakes in Iran within a time window of 2006–2013

Iran is one of the most seismically active areas of the world and frequently suffers from destructive earthquakes. Rare studies on anthropogenic-induced seismicity in Iran may be related to less attention to triggered events and more concern to natural origin of earthquakes. Hence, the present study as a frontier research aims to investigate the mining-induced earthquakes in Iran. For this purpose, distribution of ~ 76,000 seismic events was investigated between the years 2006 and 2013. This study considered a correlation test to investigate the possible mining triggering of the seismic events based on a network of 194 geographical pixels (1° × 1°) in ArcGIS. Results conveniently confirmed a positive meaningful relation between all earthquake events with magnitudes M > 0.5 and mining activities in Iran (R = 0.42). Detailed results confirmed that the most of earthquake swarms (at least ~ 60%) had mining-induced origin, which were spatially located in same pixels of metallic mineral mining sites. The correlation test between earthquake swarms and mining activities indicated positive and meaningful relationships in four regions of Alborz, Kopet Dag, Kerman, and Zagros, respectively (R = 0.61, 0.54, 0.51, and 0.50). Hence, aforementioned seismic regions exposed sensitive seismic responses toward mining triggering effects in Iran.