Introduction to the Special Issue on the 2008 Wenchuan, China, Earthquake

Abstract

The M w 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake occurred on 12 May 2008 at 14:28 China standard time (06:28 UTC) in the middle of the day. People were caught by surprise because this region, along the edge of the Tibetan plateau, was not listed as a place with a high seismic hazard. Destruction was huge. More than four million inhabitants were left homeless. Casualties numbered more than 80,000 people, and there were major economic losses. This event was one of the deadliest earthquakes in China during the last few centuries, after the Haiyuan earthquake in 1920 and the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, which claimed 200,000 and 250,000 lives, respectively. The Wenchuan earthquake occurred a few months before the beginning of the 2008 Olympic games, held in Beijing, China, and the emergency response from the government of the Republic of China was massive. In part, for efficiency during this tremendous rescue effort, scientists had difficulty gaining access to the field for the first several months. Such difficulties have partly hampered deployment of temporary networks of survey equipment, such as GPS or seismic stations by international teams, as is often the case after a major earthquake.Along with the M w 7.7 Chi-Chi, Taiwan, earthquake in 1999 and the M w 7.6 Kashmir earthquake in 2005, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake is one of the largest continental thrust earthquakes with excellent field observations that was well recorded by a variety of geophysical networks. Hence, it remains a primary target for understanding strainaccommodation processes in a compressive environment. In addition, the Wenchuan earthquake, which occurred in the Longmen Shan range at the edge of the Tibetan plateau, has called into question certain viewpoints held by the scientific community. GPS results have repeatedly shown almost no signal across the Longmen Shan fault system, and for decades, many scientists have considered that only minor deformation could take place in the area. The Wenchuan earthquake has considerably challenged this belief.Despite all the difficulties of access, the scientific community has put a considerable effort into understanding this event, which is in part reflected in the 34 papers presented in this special volume. It should be stressed that this earthquake has been a unique opportunity for the Chinese earth-sciences community to show the quality and the diversity of the teams active in China, and about 60% of the papers in this volume have a lead author who is Chinese.This special issue of BSSA illustrates the wide scope of the community interested in earthquakes. Two topics dominate this volume: strong-motion studies (nine papers) and surfacerupture studies (six papers). The other 19 papers address various aspects related to the earthquake, from structural geology to engineering aspects or gravity field measurements, among other topics. A large number of strong-motion records (> 60) are available at a considerable range of distances (a few to several hundred kilometers) for the Wenchuan event. These data were used by Bjerrum...

A comparative study on the national counterpart aid model for post-disaster recovery and reconstruction

“…On May 12, 2008, a devastating Mw 7.9 earthquake struck Wenchuan, one of the historical counties of Sichuan Province in southwest China, affecting more than half of China, causing more than 80,000 casualties and leaving four million homeless (Klinger et al, 2010). The Wenchuan earthquake is the largest earthquake since the establishment of P.R.…”

Internal structure of Longmenshan fault zone at Hongkou outcrop, Sichuan, China, that caused the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake

“…Two special issues were published Klinger et al, 2010a), and Yin (2010) and Klinger et al (2010b) gave concise summary of 57 papers in the issues covering wide disciplines. On the other hand, Chinese government launched the Wenchuan Earthquake Fault Scientific Drilling (WFSD) Project under the leadership of Academician Zhiqin Xu, and preliminary results were reported at a session of Fall Annual Meeting of American Geophysical Union Li et al, 2010b;and others).…”

Extensional Seismotectonic Motion and its Dynamics in the Eastern Margin of the Tibetan Plateau and its Surroundings

“…The serious disaster Wenchuan M8 event and the aftershocks formed a new series of events with thrust-faulting regime in the Longmenshan fault. The new events provided substantial amount of reliable data to investigate the tectonic stress field in the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau further [22].…”