VISCOELASTIC STRESS TRANSFER BETWEEN 2008 AND 2014 YUTIAN M7 EARTHQUAKES,XINJIANG

Two earthquakes with magnitude larger than 7.0 occurred in 2008 and 2014 on the southwestern end of the Altyn Tagh Fault, which is located in the northwestern borderland of Tibetan plateau. Occurrences of these two earthquakes provide important insights into regional geodynamics and potential seismic risk. Layered viscoelastic model is employed in the paper to study the interaction between these two events. We find that most of aftershocks were triggered by coseismic stress produced by the 2008 Yutian earthquake, and the effect of this earthquake is insignificant on the occurrence of the 2014 Yutian earthquake. However, stress transfer by viscoelastic relaxation of postseismic deformation is in favor of occurrence of the 2014 Yutian earthquake. The coseismic and postseismic stress transfer produced by the 2014 Yutian earthquake leads to stress increasing on the western segment of the Altyn Tagh Fault. Since the occurrence time of the last major earthquake on the western segment of the Altyn Tagh Fault is tens of years ago, it should have accumulated large moment deficit on the fault segment. The Altyn Tagh Fault should be considered as a fault with high potential seismic risk.