Abstract-We analyzed the far-field co-seismic response of the M W 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake, which occurred on March 11th 2011 at the Japan Trench plate boundary. Our analysis indicates that the far-field co-seismic displacement was very sensitive to the magnitude of this event, and that a significant co-seismic surface displacement from earthquakes in the Japan Trench region can be observed in Eurasia only for events of M W C 8.0. We also analyzed the temporal characteristics of the near-field post-seismic deformation caused by the afterslip and the viscoelastic relaxation following the Japan earthquake. Next, we performed a simulation to analyze the influence of the two post-seismic effects previously mentioned on the far-field post-seismic crustal deformation. The simulation results help explain the post-seismic crustal deformation observed on the Chinese mainland 1.5 years after the event. Fitting results revealed that after the M W 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake, the afterslip decayed exponentially, and may eventually disappear after 4 years. The far-field post-seismic displacement in Eurasia caused by the viscoelastic relaxation following this earthquake will reach the same magnitude as the co-seismic displacement in approximately 10 years. In addition, the co-and post-seismic Coulomb stress on several NE-trending faults in the northeastern and northern regions of the Chinese mainland were significantly enhanced because of the M W 9.0 earthquake, especially on the Yilan-Yitong and the Dunhua-Mishan faults (the northern section of the Tan-Lu fault zone) as well as the Yalujiang and the FuyuZhaodong faults.
Significant postseismic deformation of the 2008 MW7.9 Wenchuan earthquake has been observed from GPS data of the first 14 days after the earthquake. The possible mechanisms for the rapid postseismic deformation are assumed to be afterslip on the earthquake rupture plane and viscoelastic relaxation of coseismiclly stress change in the lower crust or upper mantle. We firstly use the constrained least squares method to find an afterslip model which can fit the GPS data best. The afterslip model can explain near-field data very well but shows considerable discrepancies in fitting far-field data. To estimate the effect due to the viscoelastic relaxation in the lower crust, we then ignore the contribution from the afterslip and attempt to invert the viscosity structure beneath the Longmenshan fault where the Wenchuan earthquake occurred from the postseismic deformation data. For this purpose, we use a viscoelastic model with a 2D geometry based on the geological and seismological observations and the coseismic slip distribution derived from the coseismic GPS and InSAR data. By means of a grid search we find that the optimum viscosity is 9×10 18 Pa·s for the middle-lower crust in the Chengdu Basin, 4×10 17 Pa·s for the middle-lower crust in the Chuanxi Plateau and 7×10 17 Pa·s for the low velocity zone in the Chuanxi plateau. The viscoelastic model explains the postseismic deformation observed in the far-field satisfactorily, but it is considerably worse than the afterslip model in fitting the near-fault data. It suggests therefore a hybrid model including both afterslip and relaxation effects. Since the viscoelastic model produces mainly the far-field surface deformation and has fewer degree of freedoms (three viscosity parameters) than the afterslip model with a huge number of source parameters, we fix the viscositiy structure as obtained before but redetermine the afterslip distribution using the residual data from the viscoelastic modeling. The redetermined afterslip distribution becomes physically more reasonable; it is more localized and exhibits a pattern spatially complementary with the coseismic rupture distribution. We conclude that the aseismic fault slip is responsible for the near-fault postseismic deformation, whereas the viscoelastic stress relaxation might be the major cause for the far-field postseismic deformation.
Abstract-The Load Unload Response Ratio (LURR) method is an intermediate-term earthquake prediction approach that has shown considerable promise. It is inspiring that its predictions using LURR have been improving. Since 2004 we have made a major breakthrough in intermediate-term earthquake forecasting of the strong earthquakes on the Chinese mainland using LURR and successfully predicted the Pakistan earthquake with magnitude M 7.6 on October 8, 2005. The causes for improving the prediction in terms of LURR have been discussed in the present paper.
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