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Slip deformation along the Gyaring Co fault from InSAR and GPS

  • Research Article - Solid Earth Sciences
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Abstract

Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) can monitor large-scale small deformation. Because the Sentinel-1 satellite has a stable orbit control and the data coherence in Qinghai–Tibet Plateau is good, we utilize data from Sentinel-1 to analyze the slip deformation of the Gyaring Co fault (GCF) in the central Tibetan Plateau. Data are obtained from ascending and descending tracks covering the research area, and the deformation results are obtained by the stacking and analysis of time series. The results demonstrate that the GCF exhibit slow slip overall. An analysis of different sections indicates that the fault displays both right-lateral strike-slip and normal faulting behaviors, and the movement is particularly obvious in the middle section of the GCF. Furthermore, we investigate the contemporary slip rate of the GCF using GPS data and construct two velocity profiles perpendicular to the fault strike at the southeastern and northwestern ends of the fault. The southeastern profile shows ~ 4 mm/year of right-lateral strike-slip movement and a modest (< 1 mm/year) amount of crustal thickening across the fault, while the northwestern profile shows much slower (~ 1 mm/year) right-lateral strike-slip motion and 0.5 mm/year of crustal extension. The GPS results are consistent with the InSAR deformation map derived using Sentinel-1 A/B data from 2014 to 2017. Our results support the distributed crustal motion model in which most crustal deformation (shortening/extension/strike-slip) occurs on various active faults in the central Tibetan Plateau rather than being concentrated on several fast-moving fault zones, e.g., the GCF-BCF. Finally, we analyze the distribution of historical earthquakes and the gravity and aeromagnetic fields. We speculate that a fault may exist north of Gyaring Co Lake that may be an extension of the fault north of Mujiu Co Lake.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (20JCQNJC01360). All Sentinel-1 data were obtained from the European Space Agency (ESA). Most of the figures were plotted using the Generic Mapping Tools software (GMT) (Wessel et al. 2013). We thank two anonymous reviewers for comments that improved this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The First Monitoring and Application Center, CEA, Tianjin, 300180, China

    Qingyun Zhang

  2. National Institute of Natural Hazards, Ministry of Emergency Management of China, Beijing, 10085, China

    Yongsheng Li, Jingfa Zhang, Yunfeng Tian & Tian Tian

  3. School of Automation, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Bingquan Li

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  1. Qingyun Zhang
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  2. Yongsheng Li
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  3. Jingfa Zhang
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  4. Yunfeng Tian
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  5. Tian Tian
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Contributions

QZ: Writing—review and editing. YL and YT: Conceptualization, methodology. JZ and TT: Conceptualization, validation. BL: Supervision.

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Correspondence to Qingyun Zhang.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Edited by Prof. Semih Ergintav (ASSOCIATE EDITOR) / Prof. Ramón Zúñiga (CO-EDITOR-IN-CHIEF).

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Zhang, Q., Li, Y., Zhang, J. et al. Slip deformation along the Gyaring Co fault from InSAR and GPS. Acta Geophys. 71, 53–63 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11600-022-00920-6

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