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The Zoige fifteenth-century 7.2 earthquake ruptures on the Eastern Kunlun Fault, China

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Abstract

The Kunlun Fault System (KFS), situated on the northern border of the Bayan Har block, central-eastern Tibetan Plateau, is among the most important active regional transform fault systems. The “Maqu seismic gap” (MSG), mainly located in the eastern KFS, is ~ 200-km long. It is composed of the Maqu section, Luocha section, and Hua Lake pull-apart basin. A strong paleoearthquake was identified on the Luocha section, named the Zoige earthquake. It is inferred that the earthquake occurred in 1488 AD. Ruptures caused by this earthquake are distributed intermittently along the Luocha section and form an ~ 50-km-long inverse “L”-shaped deformation zone. The coseismic left-lateral horizontal displacement is 3 ~ 6 m. The macro-epicenter is located west of Benduo village. The estimated magnitude is Mw 7.2 ± 0.2, based on empirical magnitude fault rupture relations. These results indicate that the Luocha section was the causative fault of this earthquake and is dominated by compression-shear stress. The latest earthquakes along the Maqu and Luocha sections occurred 1000 ~ 1500 and ~ 530 years ago, respectively. The next earthquake is more likely to induce segmented ruptures than cascade ruptures. The elapsed time along the Maqu section is close to the earthquake recurrence interval. Therefore, the Maqu section has the risk of seismic activity.

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Funding

The National Science Foundation of China (Grants 41372215 and 41872223), the earthquake industry special project of the Institute of Crustal Dynamics, China Earthquake Administration Research Fund (Grant 201408023), the basic scientific research business fund of the Institute of Earthquake Forecasting (02092437), and the joint research fund project of the National Science Foundation of Shanxi Province (2015012015) support this research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Earthquake Forecasting, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, 100036, China

    Mu Ruoyu & Zhang Junlong

  2. Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Beijing, 100037, China

    Li Hailong

Authors
  1. Mu Ruoyu
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  2. Zhang Junlong
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  3. Li Hailong
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhang Junlong.

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Data and resources

The SRTM DEM data were downloaded from NASA’s Land Processes Distributed Active Archive Center (LP DAAC) located at the USGS Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center (https://e4ftl01.cr.usgs.gov/SRTM/SRTMGL1.003/2000.02.11/, last accessed August 2020). Epicentral locations and focal mechanism solutions of recent seismicity along the KFS were obtained from the USGS (https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/search/, last accessed August 2020), the Harvard CMT catalog (http://www.globalcmt.org/CMTsearch.html, last accessed August 2020), and the China Earthquake Networks Center (http://www.ceic.ac.cn/history, last accessed August 2020).

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Ruoyu, M., Junlong, Z. & Hailong, L. The Zoige fifteenth-century 7.2 earthquake ruptures on the Eastern Kunlun Fault, China. J Seismol 25, 1227–1240 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10950-021-10036-x

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