Earthquake Research Advances最新文献

We collected high-quality teleseismic events recorded by 12 broadband seismographs deployed in the Anyuan Coal Mine and its adjacent areas in Pingxiang City, Jiangxi Province for nearly two years. The H-κ-c stacking method was employed to obtain the crustal thickness and Poisson's ratio distribution, then the characteristics of crustal structure below the stations were obtained by using the time-domain linear inversion method. The crustal thickness in the Anyuan Coal Mine and its adjacent areas ranges from approximately 32 $\sim$ 35 ​km, with an average thickness of 33 ​km, which is consistent with the crustal thickness results in South China from previous studies using the receiver function method. The average Poisson's ratio of the crustal bulk composition in the study area varies between 0.22 and 0.25, which is lower than the global value with a 0.27 average, indicating a predominantly intermediate-acidic or felsic crustal composition. There is a weak negative correlation between Poisson's ratio and crustal thickness estimates in the Anyuan Coal Mine and its adjacent areas, suggesting that the absence of mafic-ultramafic materials in the lower crust is associated with the process of crustal delamination. The velocity inversion results indicate that the crustal structure including three velocity discontinuity interfaces, with the first at a depth of approximately 1.5 ​km, the second at about 10 $\sim$ 15 ​km, and the third being the Moho. The study also indicates that the results obtained by the H-κ-c stacking method are significantly better than those obtained by the H-κ method, effectively reducing the standard deviation and dispersion of crustal thickness and v_P/v_S ratio.

Monitoring seismicity in real time provides significant benefits for timely earthquake warning and analyses. In this study, we propose an automatic workflow based on machine learning (ML) to monitor seismicity in the southern Sichuan Basin of China. This workflow includes coherent event detection, phase picking, and earthquake location using three-component data from a seismic network. By combining PhaseNet, we develop an ML-based earthquake location model called PhaseLoc, to conduct real-time monitoring of the local seismicity. The approach allows us to use synthetic samples covering the entire study area to train PhaseLoc, addressing the problems of insufficient data samples, imbalanced data distribution, and unreliable labels when training with observed data. We apply the trained model to observed data recorded in the southern Sichuan Basin, China, between September 2018 and March 2019. The results show that the average differences in latitude, longitude, and depth are 5.7 ​km, 6.1 ​km, and 2 ​km, respectively, compared to the reference catalog. PhaseLoc combines all available phase information to make fast and reliable predictions, even if only a few phases are detected and picked. The proposed workflow may help real-time seismic monitoring in other regions as well.

Large earthquakes can cause both casualties and economic losses, but they also provide invaluable opportunities for earthquake scientific research. Geofluids, due to their wide distribution, sensitive response to underground conditions, and ease of observation, are widely applied in field investigations after earthquakes. Analyzing the origin of fluids, energy transfer processes, temperature/pressure conditions, and the spatial-temporal evolution of geofluids can provide valuable information concerning the mechanism of earthquake precursor anomalies, short-term prediction methods, identification of the seismogenic faults, determination of earthquake risk, and the environmental impact of post-earthquake fluids. This article details post-earthquake scientific expeditions and research on fluid geochemistry in China and abroad, aimed at providing ideas and guidance for future scientific expedition work and geochemistry-related earthquake studies.

Decoding the variation laws of the deformation field before strong earthquakes has long been recognized as an essential issue in earthquake prediction research. In this paper, the temporal and spatial distribution characteristics of deformation anomalies in the northeastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau before and after the Menyuan M_S 6.9 earthquake were studied by using the Fisher statistical test method. By analyzing the characteristics of these anomalies, we found that: 1) The deformation anomalies are mainly distributed in the marginal front area of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, where short-term deformation anomalies are prone to occur due to a high gradient of gravity; 2) The deformation anomalies along the northeastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau are characterized by spatial propagation, and the migration rate is about 2.4 ​km/d. The propagation pattern is counterclockwise, consistent with the migration direction of M_S ​≥ ​6.0 earthquakes; 3) The time and location of the Menyuan earthquake are related to the group migration of earthquakes with M_S ​≥ ​6.0. Finally, based on the results of gravity field variation and the theory of crust stress wave, the law of deformation anomaly distribution was discussed. We suggest that both the deformation propagation along the northeastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and the earthquake migration are possibly associated with the variation of the stress field caused by subsurface mass flow.

The central-southern part of the eastern border of the Sichuan-Yunnan rhombic block provides the research strategy of ‘trade space for time’ with an interesting fault system, where the segments have similar focal mechanisms and cover almost continuous spectra of elapse rates. We experiment to study the seismological characteristics of different segments with different elapse rates. We employed the de-clustered earthquake catalog for the calculation of b values for each segment. The analysis revealed that different segments have similar b values, which implies that, although different segments have different periods of earthquake recurrence, the 'natural time' for the whole fault system elapses with a homogeneous pace. We extended the earthquake potential score (EPS) for nowcasting earthquakes to a quasi-EPS (qEPS). It is found that qEPS increases with the increase of elapse rates, albeit for those fault segments whose elapse rates have exceeded 1, qEPS may better reflect the seismic hazard.

After the occurrence of destructively strong earthquakes, rapid acquisition of the source rupture process can provide important reference information for post-earthquake disaster relief and aftershock trend determination. An M 6.9 earthquake occurred in Menyuan County, Qinghai Province on January 8, 2022. The epicenter is located in the seismic gap in the middle section of the Haiyuan fault belt. Such a typical strong earthquake was taken as an example to investigate the rupture process of strong earthquakes. Three days after the earthquake, the InSAR (Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) coseismic deformation field was obtained by Sentinel radar, indicating that the surface ruptured obviously. The southern block of the earthquake faces towards the satellite about 95 ​cm along the LOS (line of sight) direction, and the northern block is away from the satellite by ​∼ ​74 ​cm, consistent with the characteristic of left-lateral strike-slip motion. In this study, InSAR coseismic deformation data and far-field waveform data were used to jointly invert the earthquake rupture process, and a four-segment finite fault model was constructed by referring to the surface deformation. The inversion results show that the focal depth of the Menyuan earthquake is about 7 ​km, and the strike of the seismogenic fault is 89.0°, 104.0°, 119.0° and 131.0° from west to east, respectively. It is a high-dip left-lateral strike-slip earthquake event lasting about 14 ​s. The rupture propagation mode is a bilateral extension. The maximum slip along the fault is about 380 ​cm, and the seismic moment magnitude is 6.7. The surface rupture length is about 24 ​km, which is consistent with that measured in the field survey. The detailed seismic source model can provide basic data for the aftershock trend determination and seismic risk analysis of the adjacent active faults.

The seismic performance of medical systems is crucial for the seismic resilience of communities. The report summarizes the observed damage to twelve hospital buildings in the area affected by the M_W 7.8 and M_W 7.5 earthquakes on February 6, 2023 in Turkey. They include five base-isolated buildings and seven fixed-base buildings in southcentral Turkey's seven most heavily affected provinces. By relating the post-quake occupancy statuses of the hospitals with the estimated seismic demands during the earthquake doublet, the report offers the following observations: (1) the base-isolated hospital buildings on friction pendulum bearings generally exhibited superior performance of achieving the goal of immediate occupancy and provided better protection for nonstructural elements than fixed-base counterparts did; (2) the fixed-base hospital buildings of reinforced concrete structures constructed after 2001 successfully achieved the goal of collapse prevention even under very high seismic demands; (3) some fixed-base hospitals also remained operational even if they were very close to the fault rupture and were subjected to higher-than-design-level earthquake ground motions.

Based on the seismic data recorded by the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC) in the Luxian area from January 2009 to October 2021, the 3D V_P, V_S, V_P/V_S structures and seismic locations of the area are obtained by joint inversion using the V_P/V_S model consistency-constrained double-difference tomography method (tomoDDMC). The earthquakes in the study area are mainly concentrated at a depth of 2–6 ​km, and the focal depth is generally shallow. The M_S 6.0 Luxian earthquake occurred at the transition zone of high- and low-velocity anomalies and the aftershock sequence was distributed along the edge of the low-V_P zone. A small number of foreshocks occurred on the west side of the M_S 6.0 Luxian earthquake, while most of the aftershocks were distributed on the east side of the M_S 6.0 Luxian earthquake. The aftershock sequence consisted of three seismic bands with different trends, and the overall distribution was in a NWW direction, which was inconsistent with the spatial distribution of the main active faults nearby. In addition, the spatiotemporal distribution of earthquakes and the variation of b-values are closely related to the industrial water injection activities in the study area, reflecting the activation of pre-existing hidden faults under certain tectonic and stress environments leading to seismic activities in the area.