学术文献库

The subsequent series of responses to big events may exhibit a synchronicity of event number, frequency and energy release in different fault zones. This synchronicity is a reliable source for probing non-intuitive geological structures, assessing regional seismicity hazard map and even predicting the next big events. The synchronicity of main faults in the eastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau is still unknown to us. We propose to examine the correlation of earthquake occurrence among different fault zones to indicate this synchronicity, and to obtain a preliminary understanding of geodynamics processes and the unrecognized characteristics of deep evolution in the eastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. We estimate temporal changes of completeness level, frequency seismicity, and intensity seismicity, referring respectively to Mc, Z, and E values, of 21 main fault zones, using a seismic catalogue from 1970 to 2015. Our results reveal that six fault zone pairs of fault zones exhibit relative high correlation (>0.6) by all three indicators, while four fault zone pairs are non-adjacent with close internal affinity offsetting the limit of spatial distance, such as the pair of Rongjing-mabian fault and Minjiang-huya fault. Most strikingly, some fault zone pairs showing typical high correlation (>0.8) of seismicity frequency or seismicity intensity, the faults surprisingly belong to neither the same seismic belt nor the same geological block, exhibiting a regional scale remote triggering pattern of earthquakes or structures. An embryonic pattern to predict the next possible events will also be presented. This correlation analysis discovers a previously unrecognized strong coupling relationship among main faults with high earthquake risk in the eastern margin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.