Abstract: | In 1988 two large earthquakes with magnitude of Ms 7.6 and Ms 7.2 occurred in Lancang-Genma area, Southwest China. This paper discusses the determination of the spatial distribution of fault slip caused by the earthquakes using geodetic surveys. The prior information obtained from geological surveys and seismological investigations was used to determine the geometry of the fault plane and the average fault slip. The smooth constraints on the fault slips have been described by a normal distribution with hyperparameters, which are incorporated in the inversion analysis with a Bayesian model. Akaike’s Bayesian Information Criterion (ABIC) is used to get the optimal values of hyperparameters. Once the hyperparameters are determined, the maximum likelihood method is employed to estimate the patterns of a fault slip. Based on the results of inverse analysis monitoring geodetic surveys can be properly designed and conducted to obtain crust deformations and predict potential earthquake sources. |