Present-day crustal deformation based on GPS measurements in southeastern Tibetan Plateau: implications for geodynamics and earthquake hazard

Abstract

GPS-derived strain rates can provide a tight constraint in understanding tectonic evolution of the Tibetan Plateau and are helpful in seismic hazard assessment. For this purpose, we at first verify the method, proposed by Zhu et al. in 2005 and 2006, for the computation of the strain rates, and found that the approach is reasonable and accurate. Then, based on the updated GPS data, we compute strain rates in southeastern Tibetan Plateau (SETP). The computed results showed that the strain rates in the Sichuan Basin and South China Block are very small, and the high values are largely concentrated along the Sagaing Fault and Xianshuihe-Anninghe-Xiaojiang fault system. In addition, the highest principal strain rates are located around the eastern Himalayan syntaxis (EHS), with the compressive orientations perpendicular to the Main Thrust Belt. In particular, the calculated extensive deformation basically matches the normal faulting earthquakes. In general, the characteristic of the strain rate distribution is in good agreement with the tectonic structures from the geological and geophysical investigations. At last, according to the strain rates, seismicity, and tectonic structures, we estimate five most likely zones for future major earthquakes in SETP. These areas include the Zemuhe Fault, northwestern segment of the Red River Fault, and at the intersection between the Ganzi-Yushu Fault and the Xianshuihe Fault, and at the one between the Zhongdian Fault and Jinshajiang Fault. Consequently, this study is significant in deep understanding of the geodynamics in the Tibetan Plateau and earthquake hazard assessment.

Highlights

• The newly-developed method for computing strain rates is validated;

• We calculated strain rates based on updated GPS data by new method;

• Five earthquake-prone areas are estimated in southeastern Tibetan Plateau.

Keywords:

• GPS data
• strain rates
• seismicity
• earthquake-prone area
• southeastern Tibetan plateau

Acknowledgments

I appreciate the critical and constructive comments by four reviewers and the Editor (Prof. Ramesh Singh) that helped me to improve the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The author declares no conflicts of interest relevant to this study.

Data availability

All GPS data used in the paper are from Wang and Shen (2020) and Wang et al. (2021); and all earthquake data are downloaded from websites (https://www.globalcmt.org/CMTsearch.html; https://data.earthquake.cn/index.html). No other new data were used in the current study, and all the model output data are available on request from authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was jointly supported by the research grant from National Institute of Natural Hazards, MEMC (ZDJ2020-15), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41874060, 41574041), and by National key research and development program of China (2017YFC1500104).