Abstract
Crustal earthquake focal mechanisms are investigated in the southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau, where the Tibetan Plateau and stable South China Block merge. An updated database of focal mechanisms has been compiled by selecting 132 Global Centroid Moment Tensor solutions and by adding the 173 new solutions (3.5 ≤ Ms ≤ 7.4) estimated by waveform inversion in this study. A total of 305 mechanisms are included in this database. These solutions show regionally specific distributions with dominant strike-slip faulting and some normal and reverse faulting. Focal mechanism solutions have also been inverted for the stress tensor orientation to obtain the principal stress axes over the study region. Results show that the horizontal maximum principal σ 1 axes rotate clockwise with a wider range than the geodetically measured surface motion in the east, which is not limited to the Xianshuihe–Xiaojiang fault, but has some overlap with the Zhaotong–Lianfeng fault. Localized normal faulting stress regimes are observed in the Jinshajiang–Litang fault areas and the Baoshan sub-block. The minimum principal axes are oriented with a gradually changing trend from north–south to northwest–southeast, from north to south, indicating diverse compression stress patterns. Significant changes in the crustal stress field after the Wenchuan earthquake are preliminarily observed in the Baoshan sub-block where orientations of two principal axes have changed, and in the Jinggu–Ximeng sub-block areas where the strike-slip faulting stress pattern has transformed to normal faulting.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Longfeng, Luoyan, Zhengyong for providing help on technical details. We thank anonymous reviewers for critical and constructive comments. Broadband waveform data for this study was provided by the Data Management Center of the China National Seismic Network at the Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration. Some of waveform data were provided by the Yunnan Province digital seismic network. The earthquake catalog can be obtained from the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC). The CAP program for focal mechanism inversions was provided by LuPei Zhu. The Matlab code for this inversion, called STRESSINVERSE, is provided on the web page (http://www.ig.cas.cz/stress-inverse, last accessed June 27, 2014). Figures were prepared using the Generic Mapping Tool software (Wessel and Smith 1998). This study was funded by the Institute Fund Project of the Institute of Earthquake Science “Seismic study on the strong earthquake risk area of the southern segment of the Longmenshan fault (2014IES010103)” and by the project “Dynamic stress response of typical faults in reservoir areas to reservoir impoundment and water level variation” (2015IES010305).
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Luo, J., Zhao, Cp., Lü, J. et al. Characteristics of Focal Mechanisms and the Stress Field in the Southeastern Margin of the Tibetan Plateau. Pure Appl. Geophys. 173, 2687–2710 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-016-1350-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-016-1350-8