Joint inversion of InSAR, local seismic and teleseismic data sets for the rupture process of the 2020 Mw 6.3 Yutian earthquake and its implications

Abstract

On 25 June 2020, a Mw 6.3 earthquake struck Yutian county. The earthquake nucleated on a normal fault in the northwestern Tibetan Plateau. Through jointly inverting local seismic and teleseismic waveform data as well as Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) Line-of-Sight (LOS) displacement data, the spatiotemporal rupture properties of this earthquake were resolved to investigate and better understand regional crustal extension mechanisms. Inversion results show that this event ruptured along one main asperity concentrated within a depth range of 4.1–13.3 km with a maximum slip of ~0.9 m. The rupture front propagated initially around the hypocenter and then unilaterally toward the north. The whole process lasted approximately 8 s and released a total scalar seismic moment of 3.2 × 1018 Nm (Mw 6.3). The energy-based average stress drop was estimated in the range of 1.9–3.0 MPa. The radiation efficiency was estimated to be 10.0–15.8%, which is relatively low, demonstrating that most of the accumulated strain energy dissipated during rupturing. We suggest that the earthquake was possibly related to the nearby Cenozoic volcano in consideration of the dissipated rupture of the source and the west-dipping causative fault located on the western edge of the volcano. Both the westward motion of the western Kunlun block and the eastward motion of the Kunlun-Qaidam block were responsible for the EW-trending crustal extension in the Yutian district. We supposed that the 2020 normal faulting earthquake was primarily attributed to the different velocities of the Kunlun-Qaidam block moving eastward. Additionally, according to an analysis of coseismic Coulomb stress interactions, the previous 2008 Mw 7.1, 2012 Mw 6.2, and 2014 Mw 6.9 Yutian earthquakes contribute small Coulomb stress disturbance on the hypocenter of the 2020 Mw 6.3 Yutian earthquake which suggest that previous Yutian earthquakes have a limited effect on triggering the 2020 event.