Research Projects

The Koyna-Warna region of India gained wide attention among geologists due to the shallow and persistent reservoir-triggered seismicity during the past five decades. The region provided opportunities to study and understand the reservoir-triggered seismicity but still our understanding about it is not adequate. The seismicity in this region is associated with hydrologic loading and unloading cycles and occurred in a small area around Koyna-Warna reservoirs within the depth of ~ 10 km. To understand the propagation of earthquakes it is necessary to characterize the basement which act as the hypocenter for it. The granitic, granodioritic basement below the DVP is inaccessible due to the thick pile of basaltic column covering the Koyna-Warna region. The Koyna scientific deep drilling program by MoES provided unique opportunity to study the basement rocks in detail. One of the major objectives of this project is the characterization of the basement rocks from petrography, microstructures, geochemistry and geochronology that will guide us in correlating it with the cratonic domains south of the region. This is anticipated to provide an answer to the long debated question – whether Dharwar Craton is the basement for DVP or not? Another major objective of the proposed work is to understand the metamorphic changes associated with the seismicity, especially due to the interaction with fluids, which makes the basement mechanically weaker and in turn help triggering generation of new earthquakes.