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Contemporary Crustal Deformation Within the Pamir Plateau Constrained by Geodetic Observations and Focal Mechanism Solutions

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Abstract

We used an updated data set of 192 GPS-derived surface velocities and 393 earthquake focal mechanisms (Mw > 3.0, hypocenter depths < 30 km) to evaluate the spatial variations in the surface strain rate and crustal stress regime throughout the Pamir Plateau and its surrounding regions. The strain rate field was estimated using the spline in tension approach that solves for the surface velocity in a rectangular grid and the stress field was predicted from focal mechanism solutions using the damped regional-scale stress inversion (DRSSI) method of Hardebeck and Michael (Journal of Geophysical Research, https://doi.org/10.1029/2005jb004144, 2006). The results show that the crustal stress field around the Pamir Plateau is predominantly characterized by NNW–SSE compression and E–W extension, which is consistent with the principal orientations of the two-dimensional surface strain rate tensor. This agreement supports the notion that the Pamir and southwestern Tien Shan are uniformly strained blocks. In particular, the fan-shaped rotational pattern between \({\text{Shmax}}\) and the strain rate from the western Pamir to the Tajik Basin shows that the counterclockwise rotation of the \({\text{Shmax}}\) orientation is associated with vertical deformation, which is consistent with the idea of Schurr et al. (Tectonics 33(8):2014TC003576, 2014) concerning the gravitational collapse and westward extrusion of the crust in the western Pamir. We propose that such a stress–strain pattern, dominated by NNW–ESE oriented compression and E–W trending extension, originated from a combination of the northward push of the Indian continent and the southward subduction of the Tien Shan.

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Abbreviations

DRSSI:

Damped regional-scale stress inversion

\(\dot{e}\hbox{min}\) :

The maximum shortening strain rate axis

GPS:

Global positioning system

\({\text{Shmax}}\) :

Horizontal maximum principal stress

MPT:

The main Pamir thrust

GCMT:

Global Centroid Moment Tensor catalog

CNSN:

China National Seismic Network

CAP:

Cut-and-paste method

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Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to the editor of Pure and Applied Geophysics and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive reviews that have significantly improved to the manuscript. This work was jointly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC; Grant numbers 41030320, 41274064). We thank the Data Management Center of China National Seismic Network at Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration for providing Waveform data for this study. All of figures in this manuscript were prepared with Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) (Wessel et al. 2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Continental Collision and Plateau Uplift, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Zhengyang Pan & Jiankun He

  2. Department of Earth Science, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Zhengyang Pan & Jiankun He

  3. CAS Center for Excellence in Tibetan Plateau Earth Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Jiankun He

  4. Second Monitoring and Application Center, China Earthquake Administration, Xi’an, 710054, China

    Jun Li

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  1. Zhengyang Pan
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  2. Jiankun He
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  3. Jun Li
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Correspondence to Zhengyang Pan.

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Pan, Z., He, J. & Li, J. Contemporary Crustal Deformation Within the Pamir Plateau Constrained by Geodetic Observations and Focal Mechanism Solutions. Pure Appl. Geophys. 175, 3463–3484 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-018-1872-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-018-1872-3

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