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Coseismic Coulomb failure stress changes caused by the 2017 M7.0 Jiuzhaigou earthquake, and its relationship with the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake

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Abstract

On August 8, 2017, a M7.0 earthquake occurred in Jiuzhaigou County, Sichuan Province, China, resulting in significant casualties and property damage. Therefore, it is critical to identify the areas of potential aftershocks before reconstruction and re-settling people to avoid future disasters. Based on the elastic dislocation theory and a multi-layered lithospheric model, we calculate the Coulomb failure stress changes caused by the Wenchuan and Jiuzhaigou earthquakes, discuss the relationship between the M w7.9 Wenchuan and M7.0 Jiuzhaigou earthquakes, and analyze the influence of the aftershock distribution and stress changes on the major faults in this region caused by the Jiuzhaigou earthquake. The co- and post-seismic stress changes caused by the Wenchuan earthquake significantly increased the stress accumulation at the hypocenter of the Jiuzhaigou earthquake. Therefore, the occurrence of the Jiuzhaigou earthquake was probably stimulated by the Wenchuan earthquake. The aftershock distribution is well explained by the co-seismic stress changes of the Jiuzhaigou earthquake. The stress accumulation and corresponding seismic hazard on the Maqu-Heye segment of the East Kunlun fault and the northern extremity of the Huya fault has been further increased by the Jiuzhaigou earthquake.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Monitoring and Forecasting Department, Chinese Earthquake Administration, for their support of this work. All waveform data used were obtained from the Data Management Centre of the China National Seismic Network at the Institute of Geophysics, Chinese Earthquake Administration, Sichuan Earthquake Administration, and IRIS. We are also indebted to anonymous reviewers who suggested numerous improvements to the manuscript. The figures in this article are plotted with GMT software. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41674106 and 41541034).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hubei Subsurface Multi-scale Imaging Key Laboratory, Institute of Geophysics and Geomatics, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, China

    Bin Shan, Yong Zheng, ChengLi Liu & ZuJun Xie

  2. Sichuan Earthquake Administration, Chengdu, 610041, China

    Jun Kong

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  1. Bin Shan
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  2. Yong Zheng
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  3. ChengLi Liu
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  4. ZuJun Xie
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  5. Jun Kong
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Correspondence to Bin Shan.

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Shan, B., Zheng, Y., Liu, C. et al. Coseismic Coulomb failure stress changes caused by the 2017 M7.0 Jiuzhaigou earthquake, and its relationship with the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. Sci. China Earth Sci. 60, 2181–2189 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-017-9125-2

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