Overall subshear but locally supershear rupture of the 2021 Mw 7.4 Maduo earthquake from high-rate GNSS waveforms and three-dimensional InSAR deformation

Abstract

An Mw 7.4 left-lateral earthquake hit Maduo County in Qinghai province, China, on 21 May 2021. In this paper, we combined the 1-Hz global navigation satellite system (GNSS) displacement waveforms, GNSS static offsets and the three-dimensional (3D) co-seismic deformation field from the interferometric synthetic radar (InSAR) measurements to estimate the source kinematics of this event. Our results reveal that there was about 160 km of surface ruptures with varying strike angles, and the earthquake propagated bilaterally, with the bulk of the slip formed to the southeast of the epicenter. Substantial slip occurred to a depth of ~6 km, and the estimated maximum slip was ~5 m. The source time function presents a ~ 35-s total duration with two peaks, and the total geodetic seismic moment is 1.61 × 1020 Nm (equivalent to Mw 7.4). The near-field high-rate GNSS waveforms inversion results indicate that this earthquake is an overall subshear but locally supershear rupture event. The preferred average rupture velocity is 2.8 km/s while the velocities to the southeast and northwest of epicenter are 3.8 and 2.2 km/s, respectively. Supershear enhanced ground motion and simulation using the 3D curvilinear grid finite-difference method shows the acceleration caused by the earthquake exceeded the building code limits for bridges that collapsed due to strong ground shaking. Furthermore, this earthquake increased the stress level of the Maqin–Maqu segment of the East Kunlun Fault, and was also responsible for an off-fault aftershock sequence at the northwest end of the earthquake rupture.