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Gravity Changes Before and After the 2008 Mw 7.9 Wenchuan Earthquake at Pixian Absolute Gravity Station in More Than a Decade

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Abstract

Absolute gravity repeated measurements at Pixian station, about 35 km away from the epicenter of the 2008 Wenchuan Mw 7.9 earthquake, have been carried out over more than a decade. Four pre-earthquake measurements at the Pixian station show ~ 30 μGals increase from 2002 to 2008, but 13 measurements since 2008 shows that the trend of gravity increase ended after the Wenchuan earthquake. We analyzed the gravity effects from ground vertical motions using data from continuous GPS stations collocated with the Pixian absolute gravimetry station, and surficial and hydrological processes using local hydrological data. We found that these effects are much smaller than the observed gravity increase before the earthquakes, the continuously gravity increase before the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake cannot be explained by the groundwater level change and vertical deformation and related superficial reasons. All absolute gravity was measured by the FG-5 gravimeter. In this study, the high-precision gravity change revealed that the pre-earthquake gravity increase may be caused by strain and mass (fluid) transfer in broad seismogenic source regions. Further studies are needed to validate such pre-earthquake gravity changes, which however are difficult to be resolved from space-based gravity models.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank John T. Kuo and Keren Liu for their constructive comments, the Zhengsong Chen and Yongzhe Wang for processing the continuous GPS dataset, the Crustal Movement Observation Network of China (CMONOC) project for providing finance support for the absolute gravity measurement, the Sichuan Earthquake Agency for providing the continuous GPS data and water well recording data of PIXI station, the Chengdu Water Authority for providing the WRB of Chengdu, the Hydrology and Water Resources Survey Bureau of Sichuan Province for providing the water level data of Minjiang river. This work is supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFC1500503, 2018YFC0603502) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 41774090, 41604077). M.L. acknowledge support by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 91214201).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430079, China

    Yong Zhang

  2. China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, 100036, China

    Yong Zhang

  3. Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, 100081, China

    Shi Chen

  4. Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan, 430077, China

    Lelin Xing

  5. University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, 65211, USA

    Mian Liu

  6. Bureau of Surveying and Mapping of Shanxi Province, Xi’an, 710054, China

    Zhitang He

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  1. Yong Zhang
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Correspondence to Shi Chen.

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Zhang, Y., Chen, S., Xing, L. et al. Gravity Changes Before and After the 2008 Mw 7.9 Wenchuan Earthquake at Pixian Absolute Gravity Station in More Than a Decade. Pure Appl. Geophys. 177, 121–133 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-019-02356-4

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