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Wenchuan, China (2008 Earthquake)

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Encyclopedia of Natural Hazards

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

Introduction

On May 12, 2008, at 14:28:04 (Beijing Time), an Ms 8.0 earthquake struck Wenchuan, a small county of Sichuan Province in southwest China. The quake lasted for about 18 s. The geographic coordinates of the epicenter were N30°57′ and E103°24′; and the focal depth was estimated at 14–19 km. The Wenchuan Earthquake sequences included one major shock (Ms 8.0) and many fairly large aftershocks (Yuan, 2008). Within 3 months after the major shock, over 20 aftershocks exceeded Ms 5.4. The main shock and the aftershock sequences were scattered along the seismic faults, as indicated in Figure 1 (USGS, 2008; China Earthquake Administration Monitoring and Prediction Division, 2009).

Wenchuan, China (2008 Earthquake), Figure 1
figure 232 figure 232

Distribution of main shock and aftershocks of the Wenchuan Earthquake, M - moment magnitude, preferably being used for M8+ shocks (After USGS, 2008; China Earthquake Administration Monitoring and Prediction Division, 2009).

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Correspondence to Zhengwen Zeng .

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Zeng, Z., Wang, C. (2013). Wenchuan, China (2008 Earthquake). In: Bobrowsky, P.T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Natural Hazards. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4399-4_32

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