Abstract: | The method of sliding direction fitting is used to determine stress districts, taking the shear stress directions andratios of shear stress to stress on fault planes given by focal mechanism solutions as the criteria to select focalmechanism solutions of one region and sorting out the ear'thquakcs controlled by different tectonic stfess fields,and then determining the stress districts from epicenter distribution of eanhquakes. We call this method as step bystep convergence method. By inversion analyzing of 297 focal mechanism solutions, we consider that SouthwestChina and its adjacent area can be divided into 5 stress districts, and we worked out directions of the three principal stresses and values of shape factor gi in 5 stress districts. |