Abstract
Seismicity sequence following a main earthquake usually contains much meaningful information for unveiling the focal mechanism and predicting the reoccurrence interval of large earthquakes. The spatiotemporal evolution of earthquakes before and after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (Ms 8.0) is analysed comprehensively in this study. The frequency-magnitude relation of the 3493 earthquake events retrieved from the database of the International Seismological Centre indicates that the adopted catalogue is complete for magnitudes ≥Ms 3.4. The seismicity during the 10 years before the Wenchuan earthquake remained stable, including the magnitudes and focal depths. However, seismicity attenuated sharply in the year following the Wenchuan earthquake, and the magnitude of earthquakes before the Wenchuan earthquake decreased gradually. The area of the seismogenic zone of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake was smaller than the earthquake stricken area. The earthquakes that occurred in the Longmenshan fault area and adjacent area in the study period were mainly shallow earthquakes. The focal depths of earthquakes in the study area became stable gradually after the Wenchuan earthquake, mainly within the range from 10 to 16 km. The earthquakes in the study area were mainly distributed with an along-dip distance of 0–20 km, and the seismicity was distributed uniformly along the fault strike.
Highlights
Introduction e 12 May 2008 Ms 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake and the 20 April 2013 Ms 7.0 Lushan earthquake, which both occurred on the Longmenshan fault, caused great losses of human lives and to the economy. e Longmenshan fault is an active fault in southwest China [1]
Since the Wenchuan earthquake and the Lushan earthquake both occurred on the Longmenshan fault, the Longmenshan fault has received much attention in recent years
The adopted catalogue includes earthquake events recorded from 1 January 1900 to 31 December 2017, this study mainly focuses on the spatiotemporal evolution of the earthquake events in approximately 10 years following the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in the Longmenshan fault area and adjacent area, i.e., from 12 May 2008 to 31 December 2017
Summary
Spatiotemporal Evolution of Earthquakes in Longmenshan Fault and Adjacent Area, before and after the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake. E earthquakes that occurred in the Longmenshan fault area and adjacent area in the study period were mainly shallow earthquakes. Earthquake records with a temporal scale from 1 January 1900 to 31 December 2017 are adopted to reveal the spatiotemporal evolution of earthquakes in the Longmenshan fault area and adjacent area. E completeness of seismicity can be quantitatively represented by the magnitude of completeness, i.e., Mc. Figure 2 is the Gutenberg–Richter plot of the cumulative number of events N versus Ms for the earthquake catalogue adopted in this study, with a 6.81 and b 0.90. A deviation is observed in the high-magnitude segment in Figure 2, which is due to the shortage of samples with high magnitude
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