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Seismogenic structures of the 2006 ML4.0 Dangan Island earthquake offshore Hong Kong

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Abstract

The northern margin of the South China Sea, as a typical extensional continental margin, has relatively strong intraplate seismicity. Compared with the active zones of Nanao Island, Yangjiang, and Heyuan, seismicity in the Pearl River Estuary is relatively low. However, a ML4.0 earthquake in 2006 occurred near Dangan Island (DI) offshore Hong Kong, and this site was adjacent to the source of the historical M5.8 earthquake in 1874. To reveal the seismogenic mechanism of intraplate earthquakes in DI, we systematically analyzed the structural characteristics in the source area of the 2006 DI earthquake using integrated 24-channel seismic profiles, onshore–offshore wide-angle seismic tomography, and natural earthquake parameters. We ascertained the locations of NW- and NE-trending faults in the DI sea and found that the NE-trending DI fault mainly dipped southeast at a high angle and cut through the crust with an obvious low-velocity anomaly. The NW-trending fault dipped southwest with a similar high angle. The 2006 DI earthquake was adjacent to the intersection of the NE- and NW-trending faults, which suggested that the intersection of the two faults with different strikes could provide a favorable condition for the generation and triggering of intraplate earthquakes. Crustal velocity model showed that the high-velocity anomaly was imaged in the west of DI, but a distinct entity with low-velocity anomaly in the upper crust and high-velocity anomaly in the lower crust was found in the south of DI. Both the 1874 and 2006 DI earthquakes occurred along the edge of the distinct entity. Two vertical cross-sections nearly perpendicular to the strikes of the intersecting faults revealed good spatial correlations between the 2006 DI earthquake and the low to high speed transition in the distinct entity. This result indicated that the transitional zone might be a weakly structural body that can store strain energy and release it as a brittle failure, resulting in an earthquake-prone area.

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Acknowledgements

The field work of this study was assisted by the Seismological Bureau of Guangdong Province and the captain and crew of R/V Haidiao 6. This work is jointly supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program of Chinese Academy of Sciences (No. XDA13010101), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 91328 206, 41576041, 41506046), the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (No. 2017A030311015) and Special Project of Guangdong Province. Some figures in this paper were produced using Generic Mapping Tools (GMT) software written by Wessel and Smith.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CAS Key Laboratory of Ocean and Marginal Sea Geology, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, 510301, China

    Shaohong Xia, Jinghe Cao, Jinlong Sun, Huilong Xu, Xiang Zhang, Kuiyuan Wan, Chaoyan Fan & Pengxiang Zhou

  2. Seismological Bureau of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, 510070, China

    Jinshui Lv & Xiang Zhang

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Xiang Zhang, Kuiyuan Wan, Chaoyan Fan & Pengxiang Zhou

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  1. Shaohong Xia
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Correspondence to Shaohong Xia.

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Xia, S., Cao, J., Sun, J. et al. Seismogenic structures of the 2006 ML4.0 Dangan Island earthquake offshore Hong Kong. J. Ocean Univ. China 17, 169–176 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-018-3452-7

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