STUDY ON DYNAMIC CHANGE OF GRAVITY FIELD IN XIANSHUIHE FAULT ZONE AND THEIR RELATION TO THE OCCURRENCE OF MS ≥ 5.0 EARTHQUAKES |
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| Authors: | LI Tie-ming XU Yun-ma YANG Yong-lin FENG Sheng-tao |
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| Affiliation: | 1.Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100029, China;2.Second Crust Monitoring and Application Center, China Earthquake Administration, Xi'an 710054, China;3.Survey Engineering Institute of Earthquake Administration of Sichuan Province, Ya'an 625000, China;4.First Crust Monitoring and Application Center, China Earthquake Administration, Tianjin 300180, China |
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| Abstract: | Xianshuihe Fault, a main strong earthquake activity belt in southwest China, begins from Ganzi in the northwest, passes through Luhuo, Daofu, and Kangding, and then extents along the Dadu River valley. The fault is divided into two parts at Shimian, one part turns to south and converses to Anninghe Fault extending further to south, the other part, continuing to extend to southeast, cutting through Xiaoxiangling and then changing to Daliangshan Faults in the north of the Yuexi Basin, has the length of about 400km. Since 1700AD, there have happened 22 earthquakes larger than magnitude 6.0 and 8 earthquakes larger than magnitude 7.0. In this paper, we systematically collated and computed the gravity repetition measurement data along the Xianshuihe fault zone since 1988, and by referring to the anomaly index of gravity field of the predecessor achievements, analyzed the spatial-temporal variation of the regional gravity field and the relation to the occurrence of ≥ MS5.0 earthquakes. The mechanism of the regional gravity changes is further studied, and also the implication of strong earthquake risk because of the dynamic variation of gravity field in the near future is discussed.The results show that:1)The mobile gravity observation has the ability to detect crustal activity and MS ≥ 5.0 earthquake events. 2)There is definite correspondence between interannual gravitational field change and the 8 earthquakes among the 13 MS ≥ 5.0 earthquakes occurring in the surveying area since 1988, which can be determined according to the change of interannual gravitational field. Three M ≥ 6.0 earthquakes occurred 3~4 years after the abnormal image was developed, 4 earthquakes that occurred in the region of no data available were not determined. 3)A significant feature of the spatial-temporal variation of the regional gravity is a north-south run-through image before 2004, and characterized by the alternatively positive or negative variation in different year, the earthquakes of MS ≥ 5.0 occurring in this period were not distributed along the fault. Gravity variation magnitude indicates that there were two similar crustal material movement waves before 2004, corresponding to the course of earthquake space-time distribution from strong to weak in the study area. After 2010, the variation image shows that the local positive and negative zones are concurrent within a year, different from the image before 2004, and earthquakes of MS ≥ 5.0 basically occurred on the fault. It is believed that the variation of gravity field since 1988 and the seismic distribution fit with the geodynamic mode of strong and weak stages of the northeast motion of Indian plate. According to the conclusion we can try to optimize gravity anomaly index. After the Kangding earthquake in 2014, the north segment of Moxi Fault was still subject to negative high value changes till 2017 and then the gravity variation was further developed to a four quadrant distribution image. Based on the analysis of this paper and the previous variation trend of gravity field, we believe that the north segment of Moxi Fault has the background of medium-long term, strong or large earthquake risk. |
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| Keywords: | Xianshuihe fault zone variation of gravity field gravity anomaly index geodynamic model medium-long term strong earthquake risk |
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