Fine upper crustal structure of Jiashi strong earthquake swarm region in Xinjiang inferred from high resolution seismic refraction profile data

Introduction Jiashi-Artux area in southwest Xinjiang is one of the most active earthquake provinces at pre-sent in Chinese mainland. In the last century, about 3/4 strong earthquakes in Chinese mainland hit this area, and especially from January 21 to April 16 in 1997, 7 earthquakes with the magnituderanging from 6.0 to 6.9 occurred in a very small area of 9 km×18 km near Jiashi (ZHU et al, 1998). It has never taken place before in Chinese mainland that a series of strong earthquakes shoo…

Fine upper crustal structure of Jiashi strong earthquake swarm region in Xinjiang inferred from high resolution seismic refraction profile data

The data obtained from a high resolution seismic refraction profile, which was carried out in Jiashi, Xinjiang,strong earthquake swarm area, were processed with both finite difference inversion and Hagedoorn refractor wavefront imaging technique and the fine upper crustal structure was determined. The results show that the upper crustal structure is relatively well-distributed in laterally and obviously by layers vertically. From surface to 11.0km depth, there are about four layers. The P wave velocity of top two layers range from 1.65 to 4.5 km/s and their bottom boundaries, the buried depths of which are 0.4, 2.96～3.0 km respectively, are almost horizontal;The third layer is comparatively complicated and its P wave velocity presents inhomogeneous in both laterally and vertically.The bottom boundary of third layer is crystalline basement and shows a little uplift, which seemly suggest that the upper crust had been resisted while the hard Tarim block inserting into Tianshan Mountain;The forth layer is relatively even and its P wave velocity is about 6.3 km/s. There are a lateral velocity variation at the depth of about 4.0km, and suggest that it has something to do with the hidden Meigaiti fault and Meigaiti-Xiasuhong fault but there are no the structure features about these faults stretching to the surface and passing through the crystalline basement. The seismogenic tectonic of Jiashi strong earthquake swarm at least lies in middle or lower crust beneath 11.0 km depth.