A Physical Method of Analyzing theMechanism of Continental StrongShocks from Crustal Movement

In order to analyze the mechanism of continental strong shocks from the angle of crustal movement using the data of repeated geodetic survey, this paper has proposed a physical method; it analyzes the mechanism of density change due to the occurrence of strong shocks by use of the physical quantity that reflects the time change of crustal density. (1) The general theory of the time change of density in the earth’ s interior and the theory of the time change of single layer density have been introduced, and an algorithm of stepwise iteration has been proposed; (2) The effect of the change of single layer density caused by fault dislocation has been analyzed in brief; (3) The characteristics of the time change of crustal density in the south of the seismogenic region before the 1996 Lijiang earthquake with M_L =7.0 have been studied; (4) The precursor model or causal mechanism of strong shocks possibly existing in the time change of crustal density has been investigated preliminarily.