| Abstract: | The hypothesis that strong earthquakes in China mainland are controlled by the movement and interaction of active-tectonic blocks was advanced by Chinese scientists, with the remarkable ability to encompass geological and geophysical observations. Application of the active-tectonic block concept can illustrate 6 active-tectonic block regions and 22 active-tectonic blocks in mainland China and its neighboring regions. Systems of active-tectonic block boundaries are characterized by a zone of decades or hundreds of strong earthquakes. One of the greatest strengths of the modern active-tectonic block hypothesis is its ability to explain the origin of virtually all the M8 and 80% M7 earthquakes on the main continent in eastern Asia. In other words, active-tectonic block boundary stands in strong causal interrelation with recurrence behaviors of strong earthquakes and thus, it is possible to predict an earthquake occurrence in principle. After nearly two decades of development and improvement, the active-tectonic block hypothesis has established its theoretical foundation for the active tectonics and earthquake prediction, and is promoting the transition from probabilistic prediction to physical prediction of strong earthquakes. The active-tectonic block concept was tested by application to a well-documented, high-frequent earthquake area, and was found to be an effective way of describing and interpreting the focal mechanism and seismogenic environment, but there are still many problems existing in the active-tectonic block hypothesis, which confronts with rigorous challenges. Future progress will continue to be heavily dependent on the high-precision synthetic seismogram, especially of critical poorly documented settings. It is well known that strong earthquakes occur anywhere in the interactions among the active-tectonic block boundaries where there is sufficient stored elastic strain energy driving fault propagation, and then releasing the stored energy. Therefore, future studies will focus on the mechanism and forecast of the strong earthquake activity in the active-tectonic block boundary zone, with fault activity within the active-tectonic block boundary zone, quantifying current crustal strain status, upper crust and deep lithosphere coupling relation, strong earthquake-generating process and its precursory variation mechanism in seismic geophysical model as the main research contents, which are the key issues regarding deepening the theory of active-tectonic block and developing continental tectonics and dynamics in the modern earth science. |
