Cascading multi-segment rupture process of the 2023 Turkish earthquake doublet on a complex fault system revealed by teleseismic P wave back projection method

In this study,the vertical components of broadband teleseismic P wave data recorded by China Earthquake Network are used to image the rupture processes of the February 6th,2023 Turkish earthquake doublet via back projection analysis.Data in two frequency bands(0.5-2 Hz and 1-3 Hz)are used in the imaging processes.The results show that the rupture of the first event extends about 200 km to the northeast and about 150 km to the southwest,lasting~90 s in total.The southwestern rupture is triggered by the northeastern rupture,demonstrating a sequential bidirectional unilateral rupture pattern.The rupture of the second event extends approximately 80 km in both northeast and west directions,lasting~35 s in total and demonstrates a typical bilateral rupture feature.The cascading ruptures on both sides also reflect the occurrence of selective rupture behaviors on bifurcated faults.In addition,we observe super-shear ruptures on certain fault sections with relatively straight fault structures and sparse aftershocks.

Tempo-spatial rupture process of the 1997Mani, Xizang(Tibet), China earthquake of Ms=7.9

An earthquake of Ms=7.4 occurred in Mani, Xizang (Tibet), China on November 8, 1997. The moment tensor ofthis earthquake was inverted using the long period body wave form data from China Digital Seismograph Network(CDSN). The apparent source time functions (AS TFs) were retrieved from P and S waves, respectively, using thedeconvolution technique in frequency domain, and the tempo-spatial rupture process on the fault plane was imagedby inverting the azimuth dependent AS TFs from different stations. The result of the moment tensor inversionindicates that the P and T axes of earthquake-generating stress field were nearly horizontal, with the P axis in theNNE direction (29), the T axis in the SEE direction (122) and that the NEE-SWW striking nodal plane andNNW-SSE striking nodal plane are mainly left-lateral and right-lateral strike-slip, respectively; that this earthquakehad a scalar seismic moment of 3.4xl02o N. .m, and a moment magnitude of Mw=7.6. Taking the aftershock distribution into account, we proposed that the earthquake rupture occurred in the fault plane with the strike of 250,the dip of 88 and the rake of 19. On the basis of the result of the moment tensor inversion, the theoretical seismograms were synthesized, and then the AS T Fs were retrieved by deconvoving the synthetic seismograms fromthe observed seismograms. The A S T Fs retrieved from the P and S waves of different stations identically suggestedthat this earthquake was of a simple time history, whose ASTF can be approximated with a sine function with thehalf period of about 10 s. Inverting the azimuth dependent A S T Fs from P and S waveforms led to the imageshowing the tempo-spatial distribution of the rupture on the fault plane. From the 'remembering' snap-shots, therupture initiated at the western end of the fault, and then propagated eastward and downward, indicating an overallunilateral rupture. However, the slip distribution is non-uniform, being made up of three sub-areas, one in thewestern end, about 10 km deep ('western area'), another about 55 kin away from the western end and about 35 Iondeep ('eastern area'), the third about 30 km away from the western end and around 40 km deep ('central area').The total rupture area was around 70 km long and 60 km wide. From the 'forgetting' snap-shots, the rupturingappeared quite complex, with the slip occurring in different position at different time, and the earthquake being ofthe characteristics of 'healing pulse'. Another point we have to stress is that the locations in which the ruptureinitiated and terminated were not where the main rupture took place. Eventually, the static slip distribution wascalculated, and the largest slip values of the three sub-areas were 956 cm, 743 cm and 1 060 cm, for the western.eastern and central areas, respectively. From the slip distribution, the rupture mainly distributed in the fault about70 km eastern to the epicenter; from the aftershock distribution. however, the aftershocks were very sparse in thewest to the epicenter while densely clustered in the east to the epicenter It indicated that the Maul Ms=7.9 earthquake was resulted from the nearly eastward extension of the NEE-SWW to nearly E-W striking fault in thenorthwestern Tibetan plateau.

Rupture process of the January 8, 2022, Menyuan M 6.9 earthquake

After the occurrence of destructively strong earthquakes, rapid acquisition of the source rupture process can provide important reference information for post-earthquake disaster relief and aftershock trend determination.An M 6.9 earthquake occurred in Menyuan County, Qinghai Province on January 8, 2022. The epicenter is located in the seismic gap in the middle section of the Haiyuan fault belt. Such a typical strong earthquake was taken as an example to investigate the rupture process of strong earthquakes. Three days after the earthquake, the InSAR(Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar) coseismic deformation field was obtained by Sentinel radar, indicating that the surface ruptured obviously. The southern block of the earthquake faces towards the satellite about 95 cm along the LOS(line of sight) direction, and the northern block is away from the satellite by ~ 74 cm, consistent with the characteristic of left-lateral strike-slip motion. In this study, InSAR coseismic deformation data and farfield waveform data were used to jointly invert the earthquake rupture process, and a four-segment finite fault model was constructed by referring to the surface deformation. The inversion results show that the focal depth of the Menyuan earthquake is about 7 km, and the strike of the seismogenic fault is 89.0°, 104.0°, 119.0°and 131.0°from west to east, respectively. It is a high-dip left-lateral strike-slip earthquake event lasting about 14 s. The rupture propagation mode is a bilateral extension. The maximum slip along the fault is about 380 cm, and the seismic moment magnitude is 6.7. The surface rupture length is about 24 km, which is consistent with that measured in the field survey. The detailed seismic source model can provide basic data for the aftershock trend determination and seismic risk analysis of the adjacent active faults.

Source rupture characteristics of the September 5,2022 Luding M_(S)6.8 earthquake at the Xianshuihe fault zone in southwest China

On September 5,2022,at Beijing time 12:52 p.m.,an M_(S)6.8 earthquake struck Luding County,GarzêTibetan Autonomous Prefecture,Sichuan Province.The epicenter of the earthquake was at the intersection of the Sichuan-Yunnan,Bayankala,and South China blocks.The tectonic background is extremely complex,and strong earthquakes occur frequently.Based on a predetermined focal location and focal mechanism solution for the earthquake,we reversed the focal depth and rupture process of the earthquake by fitting the teleseismic P and SH waves recorded by the global seismic network.The results show that the focal depth is 16 km,with the main rupture having a length of about 45 km near the epicenter,with a maximum displacement of 1.02 m.Although the rupture mainly propagates from the north–northwest(NNW)to the south–southeast(SSE)along the fault strike,there is a small-scale rupture slip zone at shallow depths in the north–northeast(NNE)direction along the epicenter of the seismogenic fault.This rupture image corresponds to the cluster distribution of aftershocks in the NNW and SSE directions starting from the epicenter,corresponding to the distribution of recorded landslides.The earthquake occurred on the Moxi fault,located in the southeastern section of the Xianshuihe fault.The major tectonic feature in this area is the southeastward movement of the Chuandian block relative to the Bayanhar block.

Fast and robust inversion of earthquake source rupture process and its application to earthquake emergency response

Fast inversion of source rupture process for significant earthquake is introduced and applied to earthquake emergency response. We retrieve and use the apparent source time functions （ASTFs） to stabilize the rupture process inversion, aiming to get the rupture process results correctly and quickly. The applications to 22 significant earthquakes occurred between January 2009 and July 2011 show an average inversion time consumed of about four hours, suggesting a high efficiency of this method, which much improves the inversion speed of the rupture process and is helpful in earthquake disaster mitigation and relief.

Rupture process of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake from the joint inversion of teleseismic and GPS data

Teleseismic and GPS data were jointly inverted for the rupture process of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake. The inversion results show that it is a bilateral rupture event with an average rupture velocity less than 2.0 km/s along the fault strike direction. The source rupture process consists of three sub-events, the first oc- curred near the hypocenter and the rest two ruptured along the up-dip direction and broke the sea bed, causing a maximum slip of about 30 m. The large-scale sea bed breakage may account for the tremendous tsunami disaster which resulted in most of the death and missing in this mega earthquake.

Source rupture process inversion of the 2013 Lushan earthquake,China

The spatial and temporal slip distribution of the Lushan earthquake was estimated using teleseismic body wave data. To perform a stable inversion, we applied smoothing constraints and determined their optimal relative weights on the observed data using an optimized Akaike＇ s Bayesian Information Criterion （ABIC）. The inversion generated the source parameters. Strike, dip and slip were 218°, 39° and 100. 8° ,respectively. A seismic moment （M0） was 2. 1 × 10^20 Nm with a moment magnitude （Mw） of 6. 8, and a source duration was approximately 30 second. The rupture propagated along the dip direction, and the maximum slip occurred at the hypocenter. The maximum slip was approximately 2. 1 m, although this earthquake did not cause an apparent surface rupture. The energy was mainly released within 10 second. In addition, the Lushan earthquake was apparently related to the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. However, the question of whether it was an aftershock of the Wenchuan earthquake requires further study.

Rupture process and aftershock focal mechanisms of the 2022 M6.8 Luding earthquake in Sichuan

According to the China Earthquake Networks Center,a strong earthquake of M6.8 occurred in Luding County,Ganzi Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture,Sichuan Province,China(102.08°E,29.59°N),on September 5,2022,with a focal depth of 16 km.Rapid determination of the source parameters of the earthquake sequence is vital for post-earthquake rescue,disaster assessment,and scientific research.Near-field seismic observations play a key role in the fast and reliable determination of earthquake source parameters.The numerous broadband seismic stations and strong-motion stations recently deployed by the National Earthquake Intensity Rapid Report and Early Warning project have provided valuable real-time near-field observation data.Using these near-field observations and conventional mid-and far-field seismic waveform records,we obtained the focal mechanism solutions of the mainshock and M≥3.0 aftershocks through the waveform fitting method.We were further able to rapidly invert the rupture process of the mainshock.Based on the evaluation of the focal mechanism solution of the mainshock and the regional tectonic setting,we speculate that the Xianshuihe fault formed the seismogenic structure of the M6.8 strong earthquake.The aftershocks formed three spatially separated clusters with distinctly different focal mechanisms,reflecting the segmented nature of the Xianshuihe fault.As more high-frequency information has been applied in this study,the absolute location of the fault rupture is better constrained by the near-field strong-motion data.The rupture process of the mainshock correlates well with the spatial distribution of aftershocks,i.e.,aftershock activities were relatively weak in the maximum slip area,and strong aftershock activities were distributed in the peripheral regions.

Doppler effect of the rupture process of the great M_W7.9 Wenchuan earthquake

In this study we performed a classical spectrum analysis of seismic waveforms recorded at far field stations of the great MW7.9 Wenchuan earthquake to observe the shifts of the corner frequency with azimuth due to the Doppler effect.Our results show that this damaging great earthquake had a dominating rupture propagation direction of 64.0°.The equivalent radius of the fault rupture surface was estimated to be 33 km,yielding the rupture area of about 3 500 km2.Thus the length of the rupture fault surface is about 230 km if the depth（or width） extent is 15 km.The computer program developed in this study can quickly provide the information about the source of a future large（damaging） earthquake,which could be very useful for predicting aftershocks and planning the rescue operations.

Fast inversion of rupture process of the 14 April 2010 Yushu,Qinghai,earthquake

Four results of the rupture process of 14 April 2010 Yushu, Qinghai, earthquake, obtained by inverting the broadband seismic data of Global Seismographic Network （GSN） based on the inversion method of earthquake rupture process, were compared and discussed. It is found that the Yushu earthquake has several basic characteristics as follows： 1 There exist two principal sub-events which correspond to two slip-concentrated patches being located near the hypocenter and to the southeast of the epicenter. The rupture of the slip-concentrated patch to the southeast of the epicenter broke though the ground surface; 2 The peak slip and peak slip-rate are about 2.1 m and 1.1 m/s, respectively, indicating that the Yushu earthquake is an event with large slip-rate on the fault plane; 3 Overall the Yushu earthquake is a unilateral rupture event with the rupture mainly propagating southeastward. The strong focusing of the seismic energy in the southeast of the epicenter due to the ＂seismic Doppler effect＂ reasonably accounts for the tremendous damage in the Yushu city.

Estimation of the 2010 Mentawai tsunami earthquake rupture process from joint inversion of teleseismic and strong ground motion data

Joint inversion of teleseismic body-wave data and strong ground motion waveforms was applied to determine the rupture process of the 2010 Mentawai earthquake. To obtain stable solutions, smoothing and non-negative constraints were introduced. A total of 33 teleseismic stations and 5 strong ground motion stations supplied data. The teleseismic and strong ground motion data were separately windowed for 150 s and 250 s and bandpass filtered with frequencies of 0.001e1.0 Hz and 0.005e0.5 Hz, respectively. The finitefault model was established with length and width of 190 km and 70 km, and the initial seismic source parameters were set by referring to centroid moment tensor(CMT) solutions. Joint inversion results indicate that the focal mechanism of this earthquake is thrust fault type, and the strike, dip, and rake angles are generally in accordance with CMT results. The seismic moment was determined as 5.814 1020Nm(Mw7.8) and source duration was about 102 s, which is greater than those of other earthquakes of similar magnitude. The rupture nucleated near the hypocenter and then propagated along the strike direction to the northwest, with a maximum slip of 3.9 m. Large uncertainties regarding the amount of slip retrieved using different inversion methods still exist; however, the conclusion that the majority of slip occurred far from the islands at very shallow depths was found to be robust. The 2010 Mentawai earthquake was categorized as a tsunami earthquake because of the long rupture duration and the generation of a tsunami much larger than was expected for an earthquake of its magnitude.

Source rupture process of the 2015 Gorkha, Nepal Mw7.9 earthquake and its tectonic implications

On 25 April, 2015, an Mw7.9 earthquake occurred in Nepal, which caused great economic loss and casualties. However, almost no surface ruptures were observed. Therefore, in order to interpret the phenomenon, we study the rupture process of the earthquake to seek answers. Inversion of teleseismic body-wave data is applied to estimate the rupture process of the 2015 Nepal earthquake. To obtain stable solutions, smoothing and non-negative constraints are introduced. 48 teleseismic stations with good coverage are chosen. Finite fault model is established with length and width of 195 km and 150 km, and we set the initial seismic source parameters referring to CMT solutions. Inversion results indicate that the focal mechanism of this earthquake is a thrust fault type, and the strike, dip and rake angle are in accordance with CMT results. The seismic moment is 0.9195 ×10^（21）Nm（Mw7.9）, and source duration is about 70s. The rupture nucleated near the hypocenter and then propagated along the dip direction to the southeast, and the maximum slip amounts to 5.2 m. Uncertainties on the amount of slip retrieved by different inversion methods still exist, the overall characteristics are inconsistent. The lack of shallow slip during the 2015 Gorkha earthquake implies future seismic hazard and this region should be paid more attention to.

Spatial and temporal rupture process of the January 26, 2001, Gujarat, India, M_S=7.8 earthquake

The source parameters, such as moment tensor, focal mechanism, source time function (STF) and temporal-spatial rupture process, were obtained for the January 26, 2001, India, MS=7.8 earthquake by inverting waveform data of 27 GDSN stations with epicentral distances less than 90? Firstly, combining the moment tensor inversion, the spatial distribution of intensity, disaster and aftershocks and the orientation of the fault where the earthquake lies, the strike, dip and rake of the seismogenic fault were determined to be 92? 58?and 62? respectively. That is, this earthquake was a mainly thrust faulting with the strike of near west-east and the dipping direction to south. The seismic moment released was 3.51020 Nm, accordingly, the moment magnitude MW was calculated to be 7.6. And then, 27 P-STFs, 22 S-STFs and the averaged STFs of them were determined respectively using the technique of spectra division in frequency domain and the synthetic seismogram as Greens functions. The analysis of the STFs suggested that the earthquake was a continuous event with the duration time of 19 s, starting rapidly and ending slowly. Finally, the temporal-spatial distribution of the slip on the fault plane was imaged from the obtained P-STFs and S-STFs using an time domain inversion technique. The maximum slip amplitude on the fault plane was about 7 m. The maximum stress drop was 30 MPa, and the average one over the whole rupture area was 7 MPa. The rupture area was about 85 km long in the strike direction and about 60 km wide in the down-dip direction, which, equally, was 51 km deep in the depth direction. The rupture propagated 50 km eastwards and 35 km westwards. The main portion of the rupture area, which has the slip amplitude greater than 0.5 m, was of the shape of an ellipse, its major axis oriented in the slip direction of the fault, which indicated that the rupture propagation direction was in accordance with the fault slip direction. This phenomenon is popular for strike-slip faulting, but rather rare for thrust faulting. The eastern portion of the rupture area above the initiation point was larger than the western portion below the initiation point, which was indicative of the asymmetrical rupture. In other words, the rupturing was kind of unilateral from west to east and from down to up. From the snapshots of the slip-rate variation with time and space, the slip rate reached the largest at the 4th second, that was 0.2 m/s, and the rupture in this period occurred only around the initiation point. At the 6th second, the rupture around the initiation point nearly stopped, and started moving outwards. The velocity of the westward rupture was smaller than that of the eastward rupture. Such rupture behavior like a circle mostly stopped near the 15th second. After the 16th second, only some patches of rupture distributed in the outer region. From the snapshots of the slip variation with time and space, the rupture started at the initiation point and propagated outwards. The main rupture on the area with the slip amplitude greater than 5 m extended unilaterally from west to east and from down to up between the 6th and the 10th seconds, and the western segment extended a bit westwards and downwards between the 11th and the 13th seconds. The whole process lasted about 19 s. The rupture velocity over the whole rupture process was estimated to be 3.3 km/s.

Rupture process of the M_L=4.1 earthquake in Huailai Basin on July 20, 1995

On July 20, 1995, an earthquake of ML=4.1 occurred in Huailai basin, northwest of Beijing, with epicenter coordinates 40.326°N, 115.448°E and focal depth 5.5 km. Following the main shock, seismicity sharply increased in the basin. This earthquake sequence was recorded by Sino-European Cooperative Huailai Digital Seismograph Network (HDSN) and the hypocentres were precisely located. About 2 hours after the occurrence of the main shock, a smaller event of WL=2.0 took place at 40.323°N. 115.447°E with a focal depth of 5.0 km, which is very close to the main shock. Using the ML=2.0 earthquake as an empirical Green's function, a regularization method was applied toretrieve the far-field source-time fonction (STF) of the main shock. Considering the records of HDSN are the typeof velocity, to depress high frequency noise, we removed instrument response from the records of the two events,then integrated them to get displacement seismogram before applying the regularization method. From the 5 fieldstations, P phases in vertical direction which mostly are about 0.5 s in length were used. The STFs obtained fromeach seismic phases are in good agreement, showing that the Mt=4.1 eedhquake consisted of two events. STFsfrom each station demonstrate an obvious 'seismic Doppler effect'. Assuming the nodal plane striking 37° anddipping 40°, determined by using P wave first motion data and aftershock distribution, is the fault plane, through atrial and error method, the following results were drawn：Both of the events lasted about 0. 1s, the ruptUre length ofthe first one is 0.5 km, longer than the second one which is 0.3 km, and the rupture velocity of the first event is 5.0km/s, larger than that of the second one which is about 3.0 km/s; the second event took place 0.06 s later than thefirst one; on the fault plane, the first event ruptured in the direction γ=140° measured clockwise from the strike of the fault, while the second event ruptured at γ=80°, the initial point of the second one locates at γ= -100° and 0.52 km from the beginning point of the first one. Using far-field ground displacement spectrum measurement method, the following source parameters about the ML=4.1 earthquake were also reached： the scalar earthquake moment is 3.3×1013 N·m, stress drop 4.6 MPa, rupture radius 0. 16 km.

Imaging the rupture process of the 10 January 2018 Mw7.5 Swan island, Honduras earthquake

The 10 January 2018 Mw7.5 Swan island,Honduras earthquake occurred on the Swan island fault,which is a transform plate boundary between the North American and Caribbean plates.Here we back-project the rupture process of the earthquake using dense seismic stations in Alaska,and find that the earthquake ruptured at least three faults(three stages)for a duration of~40 s.The rupture speed for the longest fault(stage 3)is as fast as 5 km/s,which is much faster than the local shear wave velocity of~4 km/s.Supershear rupture was incidentally observed on long and straight strike-slip faults.This study shows a supershear rupture that occured on a strike-slip fault with moderate length,implying that supershear rupture might commonly occur on large strike-slip earthquakes.The common occurrence of supershear rupture on strike-slip earthquakes will challenge present understanding of crack physics,as well as strong ground motion evaluation in earthquake engineering.

Moment tensor inversion and source rupture process of the September 27, 2003 M_S=7.9 earthquake occurred in the border area of China, Russia and Mongolia

plane with the strike of 127°, the dip of 79° and the rake of 171°. The rupture process inversion result of MS=7.9 earthquake shows that the total rupture duration is about 37 s, the scalar moment tensor is M0=0.97 × 1020 N·m. Rupture mainly occurred on the shallow area with 110 km long and 30 km wide, the location in which the rupture initiated is not where the main rupture took place, and the area with slip greater than 0.5 m basically lies within 35 km deep middle-crust under the earth surface. The maximum static slip is 3.6 m. There are two distinct areas with slip larger than 2.0 m. We noticed that when the rupture propagated towards northwest and closed to the area around the MS=7.3 hypocenter, the slip decreased rapidly, which may indicate that the rupture process was stopped by barriers. The consistence of spatial distribution of slip on the fault plane with the distribution of aftershocks also supports that the rupture is a heterogeneous process owing to the presence of barriers.

The Q value variations in the preparing pro－cess of rock rupture

In this paper, the 'spectral amplitude ratio method'(SAR) , 'energy method'(EN) and 'coda wave method'(CW) are used to calculate the Q value variations of gneiss in the preparing rupture process. The obtained results show that the variation state of Q values by SAR features the shape of relative stability gradual increment to the maximum then decrement and final rupture.The variation state of Q values by EN is just contrary to that by SAR,i.e.with the shape of stability decrement increment and final rupture . The varation state of Q values by CW is similar to that by EN, its main frequency features the shape of relatively high value decrement to the minimum increment and final rupture.But to the high frequency (higher than the main frequency),the variation state of Q values features the shape of the stable value increment to the maximum decrement and final rupture.At the same time, the results by coda wave amplitude spectrum show that, when stress reaches 70% of rupture stress, the high frequency component of S wave rapidly reduces( Q c increasing); at the time of impending the main rupture, the main frequency component reduces with a large scale( Q c increasing again), this may be the reason which causes the different variation states of two coda Q values.The result of amplitude spectra of P, S(initial wave) waves also show that with the appearance of microcracks the frequency band of S wave turn to be narrow, the high frequency component is reduced quickly, i.e. the S wave spectra have different variation states with different frequeny components. That is why the Q s obtained by different methods have different variation characteristics.

Rupture behavior of the 2017 M_(W)6.6 Poso earthquake in Sulawesi,Indonesia

On May 29, 2017, the MW6.6 Poso earthquake occurred in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia, causing moderate damages. The mainshock rupture and primary aftershock cluster occurred in the active Palolo-Sausu tectonic zone, and some aftershocks also took place around the Tokararu fault. However, the rupture mechanism of this earthquake and its relation to regional tectonics are not clear. In this study, the rupture process of the Poso mainshock is estimated by finite-fault waveform inversion, which is constrained by teleseismic bodies and surface waves. The rupture propagates upward unilaterally in a southwest-dipping moderate-angle(~34°) normal fault beneath Tokorondo Mountains, with a notable~15% initial moment release at the first 4 s of the ~12 s rupture duration. The average and peak slip are0.5 m and 1.5 m, respectively. The rupture velocity is relatively slow(less than 2.5 km/s), and the Coulomb stress changes due to the mainshock are obtained using the inverted coseismic slip.

2023年12月18日甘肃积石山6.2级地震震源参数和破裂特征

2023年12月18日23时59分(北京时间)甘肃积石山发生6.2地震。中国地震局地球物理研究所在震后启动快速响应,组织相关领域研究人员对此次地震的震源参数、震源机制、破裂过程和地震辐射能量等进行了估计,余震序列进行了重定位,基于震源模型进行了震动图模拟、同震形变场模拟。结果表明,此次地震发生在拉脊山东侧,以逆冲机制为主,能量集中在前约8 s内释放;极震区震动烈度可能达Ⅷ度以上,可能的受灾范围近6 000 km~2;此次地震引起了显著的同震位移,最大水平向位移达到7.8 cm、垂直向位移达到15.8 cm。