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Micro-Earthquake Seismicity and Tectonic Significance of the 2012 Ms 4.9 Baoying Earthquake, Jiangsu, China

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Abstract

On July 20, 2012, the Ms 4.9 Baoying Earthquake occurred near the junction of Baoying County and Gaoyou City in Jiangsu Province, eastern China. Due to no obvious surface rupture and limited observation of earthquake sequence, the seismogenic structure of the Ms 4.9 Baoying Earthquake is still unclear. In this study, 80 earthquakes provided by China Earthquake Network Center (CENC) are first relocated; and then the relocated 75 events with high signal-to-noise ratios as templates are utilized to scan through continuous waveform data (July 11 to August 31, 2012) using graphics processing unit-based match and locate (GPU-M&L) technique. Then the DeepDenoiser, a deep-learning-based noise reduction technique, is used to further confirm some newly detected events; and the double-difference relocation (HypoDD) algorithm is used to relocate the earthquakes. We detect and relocate more than twice as many events as the CENC routine catalog, which includes 15 fore-shocks and 230 aftershocks. The results show that the foreshocks are mainly distributed in the NW direction along the extended SE section of the blind Xiagonghe fault (XF), which is orthogonal to the strike of the seismogenic fault of the Ms 4.9 Baoying Earthquake (Yangchacang-Sangshutou fault, named YSF). Most of the aftershocks are generally distributed along the NNE-trending YSF and illuminate a steeply dipping plane. This study reveals detailed spatiotemporal evolution of the earthquake sequence and suggests that the buried XF extends southeastward and cuts through the NNE-trending seismogenic YSF.

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Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. U1939203), the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2017YFC150040), and Shanghai Sheshan National Geophysical Observatory (No. 2020K02). The data used in this study were collected from the National Institute of Natural Hazards, MEMC (Beijing). The GPU-M&L package and FDTCC code are downloaded from https://github.com/MinLiu19/GPU-MatchLocated1.0 and https://github.com/MinLiu19/FDTCC. The DeepDenoiser code was downloaded from https://github.com/wayneweiqiang/DeepDenoiser. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-022-1780-4.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Geophysics and Information Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, 100083, China

    Yanzhen Li, Hongyi Li & Yafen Huang

  2. Information Network Center, China University of Geosciences, Beijing, 100083, China

    Shengzhong Zhang

  3. National Institute of Natural Hazards, MEMC, Beijing, 100085, China

    Yuejun Lü

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  1. Yanzhen Li
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  2. Hongyi Li
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Correspondence to Hongyi Li.

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Li, Y., Li, H., Huang, Y. et al. Micro-Earthquake Seismicity and Tectonic Significance of the 2012 Ms 4.9 Baoying Earthquake, Jiangsu, China. J. Earth Sci. 34, 900–910 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-022-1780-4

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