Strain fields of Ms >6.0 earthquakes in Menyuan, Qinghai, China

Abstract

In predicting earthquakes, it is a major challenge to capture the time factor and spatial isoline anomalies, and understand their physical processes, of the seismic strain field before a strong earthquake. In this study, the seismic strain field was used as representative of seismic activity. The natural orthogonal function expansion method was used to calculate the seismic strain field before the Menyuan Ms 6.4 earthquakes in 1986 and 2016, and the Ms 6.9 earthquake in 2022. Time factor and spatial isoline anomaly of the strain field before each earthquake was extracted. We also compared the evolution of the strain field with numerical simulation results under the tectonic stress system at the source. The results showed that the time factor before the earthquakes had high or low value anomalies, exceeding the mean square error of the stable background. The anomalies were concentrated in the first four typical fields of the strain field, which has multiple components. The abnormal contribution rate of the first typical field is the largest (accounting for 42%–49% of the total field). The long- and medium-term anomalies appear 3-4, and 1-2 years before the earthquake, respectively. There were no short or immediate-term anomalies within 3 months of the earthquake. In addition, during the evolution of the strain field, the abnormal area of the spatial isoline changed with the change in time. Usually, the intersection area of the two isoseismic lines of strain accumulation and strain release becomes a potential location for strong earthquakes. Finally, we found that the high strain field values of the 1986 and 2016 Ms 6.4 earthquakes were equivalent to the numerical simulation results, while the high strain field values of the 2022 Menyuan Ms 6.9 earthquakes were slightly different, but within the accepted error range. These results indicate that the two methods are consistent. We have shown that the natural orgthagonal method can be used to obtain the spatiotemporal anomaly information of strain field preceding strong earthquakes.