Contemporary kinematic models and moment deficit of Chinese mainland

Abstract

There are lots of achievements about kinematics of Chinese mainland and its vicinity determined from historic earthquake data, Quaternary fault rates and geodesy observations, which provide basic data for analysis of seismic hazard in study areas. Based on impreciseness in using energy of 47 earthquakes with magnitude greater than 7.0 in previous study, we firstly collected source parameters, surface ruptures and displacements of major earthquakes carefully, and divided them into small segmentations with these data gathered. Secondly, we determined contemporary deformation field from latest earthquake mechanisms, Quaternary fault slip rates and geodesy observations. Finally, we evaluated moment deficit of study areas from historic earthquake data and predicted deformation field, and removed 10 percent of aseismic deformation. Combining with previous results, we analyzed the seismic hazard of study areas. The results show that there are some areas with large moment deficit in Chinese mainland. There are also large moment deficit areas, including regions around the Ordos Block, southeastern coast of China and the Bakal rift zone. Previous studies show that there may be some potential earthquakes in the near future in parts of areas mentioned above.

Keywords

• Contemporary deformation field
• Earthquake segmentation
• Moment deficit
• Seismic hazard