Three‐Dimensional Electrical Structure Beneath the Epicenter Zone and Seismogenic Setting of the 1976 Ms7.8 Tangshan Earthquake, China

Abstract

earthquake struck nearby Luanxian and Ninghe in the afternoon of the same day and on 15 November. The Tangshan earthquake was the largest in eastern China in the previous 300 years. A rare earthquake occurred directly beneath the city and had the highest number of fatalities in the 20th century. It has killed over 240,000 people and caused massive economic and social disruptions (X. W. . The Tangshan earthquake occurred at the intersection of Yanshan Mountain's southern margin and the NCP. It is situated at the intersection of the Northwest (NW) trending Zhangjiakou-Bohai-Penglai seismic belt (ZBPSB) and the Northeast (NE) trending Tangshan-Hejian-Cixian seismic belt (THCSB, Figure 1a) (J. Xu & Ji, 2017). According to historical earthquakes and paleo-earthquake research, there is a ∼160 km seismic gap along the THCSB near Tianjin. In the future, an earthquake with a magnitude greater than 7.5 is possible (Yin et al., 2015), which suggests that China's densely populated and economically developed Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region must continue to prioritize the risk of large earthquakes.