Abstract
Fault activity property is one of the main reasons caused by the motion of crustal fault, and the research of fault activity characteristics has become an important direction in the study of earthquake prediction, which is an important source of new theory and new method in earthquake prediction science. The disastrous May 12, 2008, Mw7.9 Wenchuan earthquake in the Longmenshan fault zone (LFZ) took the local population as well as scientists by surprise. To analyze the temporal and spatial deformation characteristics of the Mao county–Wenchuan fault, the Beichuan-Yingxiu fault, and Jiangyou-Guan County in the central south segment of the LFZ after the Wenchuan earthquake, the SBAS-InSAR method was adopted to derive surface deformation rate with 20 Envisat SAR images acquired between August 6, 2007, and July 26, 2010. Our analysis shows that the overall movement speed of LFZ increased significantly, reaching about − 40 mm/year, which shows a dextral compression strike-slip. From west to east, the velocity changes of each section are different, and the movement of the front-range fault is dominant in the middle and south sections of Longmenshan, which is close to the epicenter. The reason may be related to the fact that the middle and south section of Longmenshan is the epicenter of the earthquake. The southern and mid-southern sections of the LFZ change from west to east, and the direction of profile movement increases gradually. In the middle and north segment of the fault zone between the two, the variation characteristics are not obvious. To a certain extent, it indicates that the fault is characterized by dextral strike-slip compression in the southern segment and the mid-southern segment. The difference in the profile movement direction in the LFZ may be related to the stress release of the southern segment of the LFZ after the earthquake while the movement of the northern segment of the LFZ was blocked. The research results will reveal the mechanism of earthquake pregnancy and earthquake generation of LFZ, enrich the knowledge of the impact on the aftershock distribution of the Wenchuan earthquake, and promote the development of earthquake prediction research.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge European Space Agency (ESA) gratefully for providing Envisat ASAR data, the Delft geospatial Institute (DEOS) for precise orbit data, and the JAXA for the ALOS DSM data, and ERSI for ENVI/SARscape software. We thank the editors and anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments and time spent reviewing the manuscript.
Funding
The present work was supported by the natural science foundation of Hunan province of China (Grant No. 2021JJ30076, 2022JJ50261, 2021JJ40023) and the foundation of the Hunan educational committee (Grant No. 21A0502).
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Huang, C., Liu, F., Cao, Y. et al. Deformation Characteristics of the Central South Segment of LFZ After Wenchuan Earthquake with SBAS-InSAR. J Indian Soc Remote Sens 51, 2041–2056 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-023-01743-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12524-023-01743-8