SCIENCE CHINA Recurrence of paleoearthquakes on the
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SCIENCE CHINA Recurrence of paleoearthquakes on the
SCIENCE CHINA Earth Sciences • RESEARCH PAPER • January 2012 Vol.55 No.1: 1–8 doi: 10.1007/s11430-012-4540-y doi: 10.1007/s11430-012-4540-y Recurrence of paleoearthquakes on the southeastern segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault, central Tibetan Plateau LI An, SHI Feng, YANG XiaoPing* & XU XiWei National Center for Active Fault Studies, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100029, China Received March 15, 2012; accepted August 22, 2012 Although there are many earthquake relics preserved in the southeast segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault in the central Tibetan Plateau, the recurrence regularity of paleoearthquakes is not yet clear. This work studies paleoearthquakes on this fault segment since the Holocene through geomorphic investigation and trench excavation. The results show that sinistral dislocation of the T3/T2 terrace boundary is up to 80 m at the Cuoa Township. A 1.5 m-high fault scarp extends 3 km near the Renguo Township. A number of paleoearthquakes are exposed in trenches at two places, respectively. In combination with historical records, our work has identified 5 or 6 paleoearthquakes on this fault segment since last 5600 years. The occurrence times and recurrence intervals of these paleoearthquakes are estimated by 14C dating on strata in the trenches. Our analysis shows that these paleoearthquakes do not exhibit evident periodicity, but instead show a clustering characteristic. From 5600 a to present, seismicity of the southeastern segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault has two active periods and one quiet period, and the present-day time is just in the second active epoch. The recurrence intervals of each active epoch are different: 1000–1300 a in the first one, 534 a in the second one. Ganzi-Yushu Fault, paleoearthquake, recurrence, clustering Citation: Li A, Shi F, Yang X P, et al. Recurrence of paleoearthquakes on the southeastern segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault, central Tibetan Plateau. Sci China Earth Sci, 2012, doi: 10.1007/s11430-012-4540-y On 14 April 2010, an Ms7.1 earthquake struck the Yushu County, Qinghai Province, China. It is another disastrous event in western mainland China after the Wenchuan great earthquake of 2008, which killed more than 2200 people, and destroyed a large number of houses in the epicenter area. The Yushu Ms7.1 earthquake produced a 31 km-long surface rupture zone with about 1.8m maximum horizontal offset along the Ganzi-Yushu Fault [1]. Tectonically, it took place on the boundary of the Bayan Har Block where a series of big earthquake had already occurred in recent 10 years, such as the Mani Ms7.5 in 1997, the Kunlun Ms8.1 in 2001 and the Wenchuan Ms8.0 in 2008, probably implying *Corresponding author (email: [email protected]) © Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012 an apparent association with the activity of this tectonic block. So it is important to study the faults that did not yet rupture on the boundary of the block recently. History records an M71/2 earthquake ruptured the Luoxu-Ganzi section of the southeastern Ganzi-Yushu Fault in 1854 and another major event occurred near Manigango in 1320, both of which lie on the aforementioned block boundary. But more early events cannot be further traced forward. The geomorphic dislocation observed indicates a 12±2 mm/a sinistral slip rate on the Ganzi-Yushu Fault since 50 ka and the coseismic sinistral dislocation of the 1854 earthquake reaches 2.5–5.3 m [2]. The earthquake recurrence interval in the southeast segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault may be 200–600 years by a simple calculation using coseismic dislocation and slip rate. Obviously, this estimation is not well constrained by sufficient data. In this paper, we attempt to earth.scichina.com www.springerlink.com 2 Li A, et al. Sci China Earth Sci further study the earthquake recurrence regularity of this fault segment by searching for paleoearthquakes in trenches and analyzing of geomorphic deformation. 1 Tectonic setting The Ganzi-Yushu Fault is the southwest boundary of the Bayan Har Block in the Tibet Plateau. The south side of this fault is the Qiangtang Block. It starts from the Ganzi County in Sichuan Province, extending northwestward through the Yushu County, and ends at the Zhiduo County of Qinghai Province, nearly 500 km long, The fault mainly dips northeast with an angle of 70°–85°, and produced a 50–100 m wide fracture zone in the Triassic strata [3]. The geological mapping indicates the Ganzi-Yushu Fault began to slide since 8–6 Ma [4, 5] at an average sinistral slip rate about 10 mm/a [6–9]. The GPS data also reveal the slip rate of 9±2 mm/a along the Ganzi-Yushu Fault same as the Xianshuihe Fault [8, 9] which connects the southeastern segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault, also has a sinistral slip rate of 10±2 mm/a [3,10,11], and experienced a series of M7 earthquakes with an interval of 20 years. The Ganzi-Yushu Fault can be divided into three segments (Figure 1) [12]: the GanziLuoxu segment in the southeast, the Luoxu-Yushu segment in the middle, and the Yushu segment in the northwest. The Yushu Ms7.1 earthquake of 2010 occurred in the middle segment. Every segment has at least one historical earth- January (2012) Vol.55 No.1 quake. For example, the west Yushu M61/2 earthquake ruptured the northwest segment in 1738, the Dengke M7 earthquake shook the middle segment in 1896 [2], the Zhuqin-Ria M8 earthquake in 1320±65 a and the M71/2 earthquake in 1854 shook the southeast segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault [13]. In other words, this fault is characterized by high slip rates and frequent earthquakes. 2 Relics of paleoearthquakes There are many narrow small pull-apart basins along the southeastern segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault, where various kinds of paleoearthquake relics were observed, including seismic bulges, gully dislocations and fault scarps. 2.1 Geomorphologic deformation at the Cuoa Township There are three levels of river terraces at the Cuoa Township, of which T3 and T2 are entirely preserved on the west side of the river. The fault scarp is 8m high on T3, 2–3 m high on T2, respectively, and the sinistral dislocation is about 80m on the T3/T2 boundary. Because terrace T1 has been eroded, the horizontal dislocation is not preserved on the T2/T0 boundary (Figure 2(a)). The fault plane appears under the fault scarp of T2 terrace. The Triassic slate and metamorphic sandstone thrust up onto the Quaternary sand Figure 1 Map showing seismotectonics and the epicenter distribution of around the Ganzi-Yushu Fault. (a) Black line shows the position of (c). (b) Position of faults comes from the map of active tectonics in China. Focal mechanisms of the Yushu earthquake come from CDSN, USGS and Harvard, and black frame expresses the position of (c). (c) Red frames are sites of the trench. Li A, et al. Sci China Earth Sci January (2012) Vol.55 No.1 3 Figure 2 Geomorphology, the fault profile and the trench site at the Cuoa Township. (a) General geomorphology (northwest view); (b) seismic bulges on T2 terrace (northwest view); (c) exposed fault (northwest view); (d) sinistral dislocation of the T3/T2 boundary and trench position. and gravel sediment. The fault dips to 305° with an angle of 68° (Figure 2(c)). The latest earthquake created long bulges or residual scarps with a height of 10–20 cm in front of the big fault scarp of T2 terrace. Individual bulges with a length of 1.2–1.5 m and a width of 30–40 cm extend about 20 m long on the strike direction. A trench (CATC1) was excavated perpendicular to the strike direction of the fault (Figure 2(d)). 2.2 Geomorphologic deformation at the Renguo Township On aerial photographs, a remnant earthquake scarp with a height of 0.5–1.5 m and a length of 3 km, trending in 300°, was recognized on the gentle piedmont zone near the Renguo Township (Figure 3(a), (b)). The fault scarp extends southeast to Ezhong village and dislocates a country road, which was built in an intermittence gully. The east boundary of the country road was rebuilt in a straight line but the west boundary of the country road still keeps the sinistral dislocation of 3 m same as the dislocation of the gully (Figure 3(c)). The fault scarp extends northwest to the Kagong Township and produces a 200m long sag-pond (Figure 3(d)). According to the presentation of the leader of the Renguo village, there was a village in this region in the past, which disappeared about 100 years ago. This fact is consistent with the old cultivating layer revealed by the trench at Renguo. And the disappearing time of the village is in accordance with the Ms7 earthquake in 1854 as documented by history, of which the macro epicenter is located near the Renguo Township [13]. It can be inferred that the surface rupture and the strong ground motion caused by the 1854 event resulted in the disappearance of the village. 3 Trench descriptions and analysis of paleoearthquakes 3.1 Methods In the paleoearthquake trench method, parameters of a paleoearthquake event (time, magnitude and displacement, etc) are estimated by the cover-cut relationship, displacements of strata and normal sediment process in the trench. To clarify relationship between earthquake deformations and stratum units is the key of trench method. In other words, the occurrence time of a paleoearthquake can be limited by dating the dislocated stratum and overlying strata (or colluvial wedge); and the displacement of the earthquake was presumably recorded by the dislocated stratum [14]. 3.2 Trench at the Cuoa Township The CATC1 trench was set in the T2 terrace of the Cuoa Township (Figure 2(d)). The height of the fault scarp is about 2m on the site of the trench. Strata revealed by the CATC1 trench are as follows (Figure 4): U1: Cyan upper Triassic metamorphic sandstone. U2: Brown coarse gravel layer. The stratum contains clay. The major gravel diameter is about 10–20 cm but the grain size of some small gravel is 2–5 cm. 4 Li A, et al. Sci China Earth Sci January (2012) Vol.55 No.1 Figure 3 Geomorphologies of several sites at the Renguo Township. (a) Fault scarp at the Renguo Township (southwest view); (b) measured fault scarp (black frame is trench, trench section RGTC1 is perpendicular to the fault, section RGTC2 is parallel to the fault); (c) dislocation of the country road at Ezhong village (view is southwest); (d) sag-pond at the Kagong Township (west view). Figure 4 Cross sections of CATC1 trench at the Cuoa Township. (a) West wall; (b) east wall. U3: Black clay layer. The stratum contains some small gravel and mica fragments. The grain size of gravel is 2–3 cm; a few gravel diameters reach 10 cm. The 14C sample dating shows this stratum age is 5600–5470 a (upper) and 8050–7940 a (middle). All 14C samples were measured at the America Beta Analytic Laboratory. Wedge A: Light black clay wedge. The wedge contains some small gravel with a diameter about 2–3 cm. Materials Li A, et al. Sci China Earth Sci of the wedge come from U3 and ancient surface. The dating of this wedge is 4730–4510 a. U4: Brown clay layer. It contains some gravel with a diameter of 1–2 cm. The age result is 4160–3970 a. Wedge B: Light brown clay and small gravel wedge. The grain size of small gravel is 3–5 cm, Materials ingredients are almost in accord to U5; the dating of the wedge is 3570– 3390 a. U5: Brown clay layer (surface layer). It contains small gravel. The diameter of the gravel is about 2–5 cm. The layer is disordered near the fault position. The 14C dating is 800–680 a. The fault expresses a positive flower structure and five fault planes can be identified in the CATC1 trench. The hanging wall is the bedrock in the southwest side of the trench. The fault plane dips to southwest. The bedrock hanging wall is hard to collapse by the dislocation of the earthquake and easy to form a wedge space between sediment stratum and bedrock. The ancient surface soil and sediment clay near the fault scarp filled fast in the wedge space when the earthquake happened and the surface clay filled in the wedge with sheet flow scours after earthquake. The occurrence time of paleoearthquake can be ascertained between the wedge (upper limit time) and dislocated stratum (lower limit time). Two paleoearthquake events are recorded in the CATC1 Figure 5 Interpretation of paleoearthquakes in the CATC1 trench. January (2012) Vol.55 No.1 5 trench. At the beginning, U1, U2 and U3 were deposited in order before paleoearthquake events (Figure 5(a)). The first event broke F1 and F2, and formed wedge A between U1 and U3. Materials of the wedge came from U3 and the ancient surface (Figure 5(b)). The 14C dating of the upper U3 and wedge A respectively ascertain the lower limit time of 5600–5470 a and the upper limit time of 4730–4510 a (Figure 4). U4 was deposited after the first event and then the second paleoearthquake event occurred (Figure 5(c)). Expressions of the second event are different on two walls of the CATC1 trench. A suite of F3 dislocates wedge A and F2 resumed. The active F2 resulted in wedge A slipping down between F2 and F4 on the east wall. Covering layer U4 collapsed and the place was filled with wedge B between F4 and F5. Differently, F3 did not break on the west wall of the trench. F4 dislocated U4 and wedge B was formed between F4 and U4 of the hanging wall (Figure 5(d)). The upper limit and lower limit time are respectively determined by wedge B dating of 3570–3390 a and U4 dating of 4160– 3970 a (Figure 4). The surface layer U5 deposited after the second event, and 14C dating of U5 was 800–600 a (Figure 5(e)). The epicenter of the Zhuqin-Ria M8 earthquake in AD1320 is only 20km away from the CATC1 trench. Seismic bulges might be produced at Cuoa by this historical earthquake (Figure 2(b)) which occurred after U5 age and 6 Li A, et al. Sci China Earth Sci F5 has some directional gravel in U5 (Figure 4). 3.3 Trench at the Renguo Township The trench of the Renguo Township was set on a rangefront fault scarp southwest of the Renguo 4th village (Figure 3(a)). Micro-geography shows that a NW trending hillock is present at north of the footwall in the trench, where a narrow expanse of depression is formed. A similar physiographic feature is also seen between the hanging wall of the trench and a gully in the west (Figure 3(b)). From lower to upper, strata exposed in the Renguo trench are as follows (Figure 6): U1-1: Grey-yellow coarse gravel layer, dominated by gravel with a diameter about 5–20 cm, and some over 20 cm. The gravel has a poor sorting and is slightly rounded. In January (2012) Vol.55 No.1 partial areas the stratum is largely black and becomes grey-white after sunning dry. The 14C dating is 16040– 15750 a and 9460–9260 a. The 14C dating of this stratum in the RGTC2 trench is 3880–3690 a and 2920–2770 a (top layer). So, the deposition process of this stratum continues for a long time. U1-2: Light black gravel layer. The stratum has a high content of clay and fine soil. The gravel diameter is about 5cm and some over 10 cm. This stratum only appears on the hanging wall, in a gradual transition relation to U1-1, with a 14 C dating age 6290–6000 a indicative of a coeval deposit as U1-1. U2: Black small gravel layer with high clay content and darker color than U1-2. The gravel diameter is 1–3 cm. This stratum only appears on the west wall of the RGTC1 trench as local deposit in a depression. The 14C dating is 5050– Figure 6 Cross sections of the Renguo trench. (a) West wall of RGTC1 trench; (b) east wall of RGTC1 trench; (c) south wall of RGTC2 trench; (d) north wall of RGTC2 trench. Li A, et al. Sci China Earth Sci 4850 a. U3: Light black or brown small gravel layer with grain size about 5 cm. Its color on the west wall of the RGTC1 trench is slightly darker than that on the east wall which appears only on the hanging wall of the trench. The stratum thins out toward east in the RGTC2 trench, where sinistral offset of 8 m is measured relative to the east wall of the RGTC1 trench. The 14C dating is 2730–2470 a. It is noted the top of U1 underlying the northern and southern walls of the RGTC2 trench is 3880–3690 and 2890–2760 a, respectively. Thus the strata exposed in two trenches RGTC1 and RGTC2 should be the same strata. U4-1: Yellow clay layer (old cultivating layer) with grain size 3 cm, poorly rounded, since the farmers have selected big gravel and put them down under the fault scarp and left fine clay for cultivating crops. In this layer, there is much charcoal from burned straw, which is distributed horizontally. The 14C dating is 1180–1050, 940–800 and 970–900 a. U4-2: Brown sandy clay layer which is surface sward layer and has gravel with grain size of 1–3 cm. Wedge A: It overlies U1-1. Wedge B: The 14C dating of 1060–930 and 980–910a is roughly the same as U4-1. The villagers put gravel of U4-1down near the wedge B. Four fault planes have been recognized in the trench, which are described as follows. F1: The top of the fault plane terminates in U1-1. No wedge or flower structure is found in the upper portion. F2: Wedge A and B overlie the top of F2. On the east wall of the RGTC1trench, wedge A is displaced (Figure 6(b)), and F2 plane can be seen in A on the west wall of this trench (Figure 6(a)). F3: It is 10–15 cm wide, where the overlying bottom of U2 is disturbed with an uneven surface. F4: It dislocates U3 and is intruded by a ball of small gravel which has the 14C dating age 2890–2760 a. Two paleoearthquake events have been determined by using the cut-cover relationship between the fault plane and the strata. The first event had occurred before U1 deposition ended, which produced faults F2, F3 and wedge A. In the top of F3, U2 was disturbed and undulation occurred in its bottom. There are two possibilities for the occurrence time of this event. One is that U2 did not begin to deposit when the seismic event took place, but the surface of that time (top of U1) was deformed. After that U2 was deposited. The other is that U2 had begun to deposit when the earthquake occurred and continued to deposit afterward. In both cases, the bottom of U2 overlying F2 would be deformed while its top remained intact and flat. The 14C dating of the sample collected from the bottom of U2, disturbed by the fault, is 5050–4850 a. In the first possibility, the age of U2 is the upper limit time and in the second possibility, it is the lower limit time. But whatever this age can be considered to be or approximate the occurrence time of the first paleoearthquake event. The second event occurred after U3 had been January (2012) Vol.55 No.1 7 deposited when F4 dislocated U3 and was squeezed by some gravel of size like that in U3 on west wall. F4 is not clear on the east wall; no evident deformation was seen in overlying U3 which does not appear in the footwall. The 14C dating of squeezed gravel is 2890–2760 a and the 14C dating of U3 is 2730–2470 a, respectively. So the occurrence time of the second paleoearthquake is approximately 2890–2760 or 2730–2470 a. U3 thins out to east in the RGTC2 trench, where an 8m left offset is measured with respect to the east wall of the RGTC1 trench. At least, this offset contains displacements of two seismic events: the second paleoearthquake event aforementioned and the historical earthquake in 1854 that produced a 3m displacement on the Ezhong country road. 4 Occurrence times of paleoearthquakes and intervals Shimazaki and Nakata [15] proposed the simple timepredictable recurrence model for large earthquakes. Afterwards, Savage and Cockerham [16] suggested the quasiperiodic occurrence model which means earthquakes have periodicity in time and their magnitudes have a finite range of variation based the research of earthquakes in 1978– 1986 Bishop-Mammoth Lakes sequence. Sieh [17] discussed the clustering feature of earthquakes based on precise chronology of earthquakes produced by the San Andreas Fault. This work demonstrates that totally 3–4 paleoearthquake events are recorded in two trenches (Figure 7). They respectively occurred dbetween 5600–5470 a and 4730–4510 a, before 5050–4850 a (maybe a same earthquake as the former), between 3570–3390a and 4160–3970 a, between 2890–2760 a and 2730–2470 a. Two documented historical earthquakes respectively occurred in 1320 AD and 1854 AD. Because the strata deposited in the trench are continuous, the paleoearthquake event is impossible to miss. Three or four paleoearthquakes events occurred during about 3000 years from 5600–5470 a to 2730–2470 a, and afterwards no earthquake was recorded during about 2000 years from 2730–2470 a to 630 a (1320 AD), and finally two historical earthquakes happened in the past 630 years (Figure 7). It shows a conspicuous clustering characteristic of seismicity on the southeast segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault. The period of 5600–5470 a to 2730–2470 a is the first active epoch, in which the recurrence interval is 1000–1300 a. The subsequent period of 2730–2470 a to 630 a (1320 AD) is a calm stage. Then the second active stage comes from 630a (1320 AD) to present. By estimation using the intermediate value between the upper and lower limit times, the recurrence interval for the first active epoch is 1000–1300a and that for the second active epoch, during which only two events took place, is 534 years, respectively. It seems that there is no evident periodicity of earthquakes, and instead 8 Li A, et al. Sci China Earth Sci January (2012) Vol.55 No.1 2 3 4 Figure 7 Occurrence times of paleoearthquake events and active periods of the southeastern segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault. they likely have a clustering feature. 5 Conclusions 5 6 7 The earthquake recurrence on the southeastern segment of the Ganzi-Yushu Fault exhibits a clustering character. From 5600 a to present, this fault section has two active periods and one quiet period. And recurrence intervals are different in different active stages. The earthquake recurrence interval is 1000–1300 a in the first active stage. The interval between the two historic earthquakes is 534 years in the second active period which continues to present time. Previous studies suggest that the Ganzi-Yushu Fault has the average of sinistral slip rate of 7–10 mm/a [2, 6, 8]. The southeastern segment of this fault has the maximum coseismic displacement of 5.3 m and the average coseismic displacement of 3–5 m [2]. By geomorphology analysis, the recurrence interval was estimated to be about 500 years [2], not well consistent with the result of this article by the paleoearthquake method. 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 This study was supported by the Yushu Earthquake Science Investigation of China Earthquake Administration. Thanks are due to Prof. Gao Xianglin and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments. 1 Chen L C, Wang H, Ran Y K, et al. The MS7.1 Yushu Earthquake surface rupture and large historical earthquakes on the Ganzi-Yushu 16 17 Fault. Chin Sci Bull, 2010, 55: 3504–3509 Wen X Z, Xu X W, Zheng R Z, et al. Average slip-rate and recent large earthquake ruptures along the Garzê-Yushu Fault. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci, 2003, 46(Suppl 2): 276–288 Zhang P Z, Deng Q D, Zhang G M, et al. Active tectonic blocks and strong earthquakes in the continent of China. 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