Postseismic Deformation of the MS 8.1 Nepal Earthquake in 2015 from GPS Observations

Abstract

On April 25, 2015, the Nepal MS 8.1 earthquake took place in the Himalayan seismic belt on the southern margin of Tibetan Plateau. After the earthquake, the China Earthquake Administration established Immediately 13 postseismic GPS continuous stations in the southern Tibetan region. In this study, such data, the data of China’s crustal movement observation network in the southern Tibet region and the data of GPS continuous stations in Nepal are used to estimate the postseismic deformation of the GPS station. Three postseismic deformation models, i.e., a logarithmic model, an exponential model and an integrated combination, are used for fitting GPS postseismic deformation. The Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithm, based on a Bayesian framework, is applied to invert model parameters. The results show that the integrated model for the logarithmic model and exponential model can accurately fit the postseismic deformation observed by GPS, indicating that the postseismic deformation observed by GPS may involve two different deformation mechanisms with multi-scale characteristics. Based on the analysis of the spatial-temporal distribution of the postseismic deformation field and its comparison with the coseismic deformation field, it is considered that the afterslip mainly occurs in the deep area where the coseismic rupture extends northward, while the seismic risk in the shallow area where the coseismic rupture is not broken still deserves further attention.