FOCAL MECHANISM SOLUTIONS AND STRESS FIELD OF THE 2019 CHANGNING,SICHUAN MAINSHOCK AND ITS MODERATE-STRONG AFTERSHOCKS(MS≥4.0)

A M_S6.0 earthquake with shallow focal depth of 16km struck Changning County, Yibin City, Sichuan Province at 22:55: 43(Beijing Time)on 17 June 2019. Although the magnitude of the earthquake is moderate, it caused heavy casualties and property losses to Changning County and its surrounding areas. In the following week, a series of aftershocks with M_S≥4.0 occurred in the epicentral area successively. In order to better understand and analyze the seismotectonic structure and generation mechanism of these earthquakes, in this paper, absolute earthquake location by HYPOINVERSE 2000 method is conducted to relocate the main shock of M_S6.0 in Changning using the seismic phase observation data provided by Sichuan Earthquake Administration, and focal mechanism solutions for Changning M_S6.0 main shock and M_S≥4.0 aftershocks are inferred using the gCAP method with the local and regional broadband station waveforms recorded by the regional seismic networks of Sichuan Province, Yunnan Province, Chongqing Municipality, and Guizhou Province. The absolute relocation results show that the epicenter of the main shock is located at 28.35°N, 104.88°E, and it occurred at an unusual shallow depth about only 6.98km, which could be one of the most significant reasons for the heavier damage in the Changning and adjoining areas. The focal plane solution of the Changning M_S6.0 earthquake indicates that the main shock occurred at a thrust fault with a left-lateral strike-slip component. The full moment tensor solution provided by gCAP shows that it contains a certain percentage of non-double couple components. After the occurrence of the main shock, a series of medium and strong aftershocks with M_S≥4.0 occurred continuously along the northwestern direction, the fault plane solutions for those aftershocks show mostly strike-slip and thrust fault-type. It is found that the mode of focal mechanism has an obvious characteristic of segmentation in space, which reflects the complexity of the dislocation process of the seismogenic fault. It also shows that the Changning earthquake sequences occurred in the shallow part of the upper crust. Combining with the results from the seismic sounding profile in Changning anticline, which is the main structure in the focal area, this study finds that the existence of several steep secondary faults in the core of Changning anticline is an important reason for the diversity of focal mechanism of aftershock sequences. The characteristics of regional stress field is estimated using the STRESSINVERSE method by the information of focal mechanism solutions from our study, and the results show that the Changning area is subject to a NEE oriented maximum principal stress field with a very shallow dipping and near-vertical minimum principal stress, which is not associated with the results derived from other stress indicators. Compared with the direction of the maximum principal compressive stress axis in the whole region, the direction of the stress field in the focal area rotates from the NWW direction to the NEE direction. The Changning M_S6.0 earthquake locates in the area with complex geological structure, where there are a large number of small staggered fault zones with unstable geological structure. Combining with the direction of aftershocks distribution in Changning area, we infer that the Changning M_S6.0 earthquake is generated by rupturing of the pre-existing fault in the Changning anticline under the action of the overall large stress field, and the seismogenic fault is a high dip-angle thrust fault with left-lateral strike-slip component, trending NW.