Several environmental processes can perturb the stress state in the earth's crust. These range from surface processes, such as the hydrological cycle, sediment erosion and deposition, atmospheric pressure variations, thermoelastic strain, and the tides; to phenomena acting at depth, such as pore-pressure build-up, magmatic inflation or fault network interactions. Some of these forcings are anthropogenic in nature, including manmade reservoirs, large-scale excavations and the extraction or injection of fluids. It has been widely observed that such environmental stress changes can disturb the seismic cycle. Even small variations can affect the rate and magnitude of seismic as well as aseismic events (creep and slow slip).

This session is dedicated to highlighting studies that explore the influence of environmental stress changes on the seismic cycle at different scales. We welcome contributions that explore a wide range of observations, advances from laboratory experiments, as well as numerical modeling and theoretical studies.