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Seismic imaging of the middle and upper crust by double-difference tomography: the Haicheng earthquake (Ms 7.3) in Liaoning Province

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Abstract

The Haicheng earthquake (Ms 7.3) occurred in Liaoning Province (39°N–43°N, 120°E–126°E ), China on February 4, 1975. The mortality rate was only 0.02% owing to the first timely and accurate prediction, although the area affected by the earthquake was 9200 km2 and covered cities with a population density of 1000 p/km2. In this study, the doubledifference (DD) tomography method was used to obtain high-resolution three-dimensional (3D) P- and S-wave velocity (Vp and Vs) structures and Vp/Vs as well as the earthquake locations. Tomography results suggest that velocity structure at shallow depth coincides well with topography and sediment thickness. The earthquake locations form a northwest-striking zone associated with the Jinzhou(JZ) Fault and a northeast-striking zone associated with the Haichenghe-Dayanghe (HD) Fault, and suggest that the JZ Fault consists of three faults and the Ms 7.3 Haicheng earthquake originated at the intersection of the JZ and the Faults. Lowvelocity zones (LVZs) with low Vp/Vs are observed at 15–20 km depth beneath the Haicheng (HC) region. We interpret the LVZs in the middle crust as regions of fluids, suggesting rock dehydration at high temperatures. The LVZs and low Vp/Vs in the upper crust are attributed to groundwater-filled cracks and pores. We believe that large crustal earthquakes in this area are caused by the combination of faulting and fluid movement in the middle crust.

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Acknowledgments

Part of the waveform data used in this study were provided by the Data Management Centre of the China National Seismic Network at Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration. We thank Prof. Haijiang Zhang for providing the tomoDD program. Most of the figures were made using the GMT software (Wessel and Smith, 1998).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Geoexploration Science and Technology, Jilin University, Changchun, 130026, China

    Que Zheng, Cai Liu, You Tian & Hong-Xiang Zhu

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  1. Que Zheng
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  2. Cai Liu
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  3. You Tian
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  4. Hong-Xiang Zhu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to You Tian.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants Nos. 41430322 and 41474030) and the National Key Research and Development Project of China (Grants No. 2016YFC0600301).

Zheng Que received her B.S. in Engineering from Jilin University (2011) and M.S. in Solid Geophysics from Jilin University (2014). She is presently a PhD candidate in Jilin University. Her research interests are seismic tomography, seismic frequency and magnitude distribution and seismofractology.

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Zheng, Q., Liu, C., Tian, Y. et al. Seismic imaging of the middle and upper crust by double-difference tomography: the Haicheng earthquake (Ms 7.3) in Liaoning Province. Appl. Geophys. 15, 125–136 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11770-018-0662-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11770-018-0662-0

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