NEW EVIDENCES FOR AMENDMENT OF MACRO-EPICENTER LOCATION OF 1303AD HONGTONG EARTHQUAKE

The Hongtong earthquake occurring on 25 September 1303 in both Linfen Basin (LFB)and Taiyuan Basin (TYB)in Shanxi Graben is the first M8.0 earthquake based on the Chinese literature in China mainland, 392 years later, the Linfen M7.5 earthquake occurred on 18 May 1695 in Linfen Basin with its macro-epicenter distance of only 40km south of the Hongtong earthquake. Due to their close macro-epicenter distance and shortly interval of 392a, it attracted continuous attention to the geoscientists around Southern Shanxi Graben, southeastern Orods Plate. This paper combines the historical documents and interpreting the coseismic triggered disasters in study area. The results show that:1)the number of building damaged in the southern TYB and Lingshi Uplift (LSU)during 1303 Hongtong earthquake is similar to that of the LFB, indicating that the TYB and LSU maybe suffered the same or even worse earthquake disaster losses during the 1303 Hongtong earthquake. While the 1695 Linfen earthquake is confined within the LFB and south of Hongtong County; 2)More than 11 000 loess landslides were triggered by the 1303 Hongtong earthquake event between LFB and TYB, which is consistent with the literature records. We suggested the macro-epicenter of the 1303 Hongtong earthquake should move about 60km northward from the present location (36.3°N, 111.7°E)near Hongtong County to the new location (36.8°N, 111.7°E) between Huozhou City and Lingshi County, the new macro-epicenter location can reasonably explain the large-scale centralized earthquake-triggered landslides during the event. The landslides had aggravated the severity of the loss; 3)Our result helps to understand the spatial distribution of the two strong earthquakes and the relationship between them, especially the distribution map of earthquake-induced loess landslides by 1303 Hongtong earthquake extracted using the Google Earth images, which supports the amendment of the macro-epicenter.