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Stress-Strain Characteristics Before the 2021 Ms 6.4 Yangbi Earthquake in Yunnan Province, China, and Implications for the Seismogenic Mechanism

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Abstract

On May 21, 2021, an Ms 6.4 earthquake occurred in Yangbi County, Yunnan Province, China. The epicenter was located on a secondary blind fault on the southwestern boundary of the Sichuan-Yunnan Block, and this area has a complex tectonic setting and seismogenic background. To improve the understanding of the seismogenic mechanism of this earthquake, we conduct an in-depth analysis on the regional stress and strain characteristics based on geodetic data from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and seismological data (focal mechanism solutions) and analyze the stress changes at the epicenter of this earthquake from the perspective of stress triggering. The results show that the epicenter area of the Yangbi earthquake was characterized by significant shear and extension deformation, with a dextral shear rate of 2.5 × 10−8/a and an extension rate of 3.5 × 10−8/a. The present tectonic stress of the study area is dominated by NNW-directed principal compressive stress and NEE-directed principal extension stress, and the Yangbi main shock occurred on the optimal release nodal plane of the tectonic stress field where the relative shear stress reached 0.984. Furthermore, the cumulative Coulomb stress changes caused by four strong historical earthquakes exceeded the stress trigger threshold of 0.1 bar. All of these results suggest that the Yangbi Ms 6.4 earthquake was the result of the maximum effective shear stress concentration on the blind fault on the southwest side of the Weixi-Qiaohou fault, which was mainly driven by the regional tectonic stress and the surrounding historical strong earthquakes.

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Data availability

The GNSS velocities and GNSS time series are available at https://www.eqdsc.com/. The focal mechanism solutions are from the works of Shuzhong Sheng et al. (2022) and the National Seismic Science Data Center (https://data.earthquake.cn, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.12080/nedc.11.Ds.2022.0004).

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Crustal Movement Observation Network of China (CMONOC I) and the Tectonic and Environmental Observation Network of Mainland China (CMONOC II) for providing the GNSS observations. We are grateful to Professors Yanqiang Wu and Shuzhong Sheng for their helpful advice. We thank Professor Yongge Wan for providing the procedure for the simulation of the relationship between the stress regimes and focal mechanism.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 41974011, 42204093) and the Earthquake Tracking Task of the China Earthquake Administration (2020010223).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The First Monitoring and Application Center, China Earthquake Administration, 7 Naihuo Road, Tianjin, 300180, China

    Layue Li, Wei Zhan, Changyun Chen & Jingyang Zhao

  2. Institute of Earthquake Forecasting, China Earthquake Administration, 63 Fuxing Road, Beijing, 100036, China

    Xiaobo Li

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Contributions

LL and WZ designed the research, analyzed the results, and wrote the manuscript. LL was also responsible for the validation, formal analysis, investigation, and the writing-original draft. CC and JZ performed the GPS data processing. JZ calculated the GNSS strain time series. XL participated in the creation of the graphics.

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Correspondence to Layue Li.

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Li, L., Zhan, W., Chen, C. et al. Stress-Strain Characteristics Before the 2021 Ms 6.4 Yangbi Earthquake in Yunnan Province, China, and Implications for the Seismogenic Mechanism. Pure Appl. Geophys. 180, 2543–2559 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-023-03314-x

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