Geoscience experts are hoping a cluster of earthquakes that have struck the Wheatbelt over the past seven days may help reveal the reasons for the region's geological instability.
Thirteen quakes were recorded in and around Mukinbudin, 300 kilometres east of Perth, over the past week.
The largest reached a magnitude of 3.2, with the majority of the others in the magnitude-2 range.
Geoscience Australia seismologist Trevor Allen said earthquakes in this area of the Wheatbelt were common.
"There have been numerous earthquake swarms in the past, particularly near places like Beacon, Koorda, and Burakin," Dr Allen said.
"In the past 10 years, we've actually recorded almost 1,000 earthquakes within 100 kilometres of the current activity."
In 2020, about 30 temporary monitoring stations were installed from Badgingarra to Lake King as part of a study to better understand earthquake behaviour in one of Australia's most seismically active areas.
The two-year data collection project is being conducted by Geoscience Australia, the Geological Survey of Western Australia, the Australian National University, Macquarie University, and the Department of Fire and Emergency Services.
Dr Allen said information from the stations — located at fire brigade sheds — will be analysed for several more years.
"Once we pull up those stations, we're hoping to learn a lot more about why that area in the Wheatbelt, in particular, is so seismically active," he said.
Known as the south-west seismic zone, the area of study has been the source of five of the nine surface-rupturing earthquakes recorded in Australia in the past 60 years.
In 1968, a magnitude-6.9 earthquake destroyed almost 100 buildings in the Wheatbelt town of Meckering and injured 20 people.
Dr Allen said, while uncommon, there was always the possibility of larger earthquakes in the aftermath of a cluster of tremors.
"Earlier this year, we saw a large swarm of earthquakes in the Arthur River region … we actually recorded over 2,000 small earthquakes associated with that, and the largest one of those was a magnitude-4.8," he said.
"If a large earthquake does occur, the best advice that I would give is to drop, cover and hold: drop to the ground, [take] cover under something sturdy such as a table, and hold on until the shaking stops."
