Complete three-dimensional coseismic displacements due to the 2021 Maduo earthquake in Qinghai Province,China from Sentinel-1 and ALOS-2 SAR images

On 22 nd May 2021(local time),an earthquake of M_(s)7.4 struck Maduo county in Qinghai Province,China.This was the largest earthquake in China since the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.In this study,ascending/descending Sentinel-1 and advanced land observation satellite-2(ALOS-2)synthetic aperture radar(SAR)images were used to derive the three-dimensional(3-D)coseismic displacements of this earthquake.We used the differential interferometric SAR(In SAR,DIn SAR),pixel offset-tracking(POT),multiple aperture In SAR(MAI),and burst overlap interferometry(BOI)methods to derive the displacement observations along the line-of-sight(LOS)and azimuth directions.To accurately mitigate the effect of ionospheric delay on the ALOS-2 DIn SAR observations,a polynomial fitting method was proposed to optimize range-spectrum-split-derived ionospheric phases.In addition,the 3-D displacement field was obtained by a strain model and variance component estimation(SM-VCE)method based on the high-quality SAR displacement observations.Results indicated that a left-lateral fault slip with the largest horizontal displacement of up to 2.4 m dominated this earthquake,and the small-magnitude vertical displacement with an alternating uplift/subsidence pattern along the fault trace was more concentrated in the near-fault regions.Comparison with the global navigation satellite system data indicated that the SM-VCE method can significantly improve the accuracy of the displacements compared to the classical weighted least squares method,and the incorporation of the BOI displacements can substantially benefit the accuracy of north-south displacement.In addition to the displacements,three coseismic strain invariants calculated based on the strain model parameters were also investigated.It was found that the eastern and western parts of the faults suffered more significant strains compared with the epicenter region.

Correlation between the tilt anomaly on the vertical pendulum at the Songpan station and the 2021 MS7.4 Maduo earthquake in Qinghai province,China

Understanding the relationship between precursory deformation anomalies and strong earthquakes is vital for physical earthquake prediction. Six months before the 2021 MS7.4 Maduo earthquake in Qinghai province, China, the vertical pendulum at the Songpan station was observed to tilt southward with a high rate and large amplitude. Studies conducted before the 2021 MS7.4 Maduo earthquake inferred the tilt anomaly to be an earthquake precursor. However, after the earthquake, the relation between the earthquake and the anomaly became controversial, partly because the Songpan station is located at a great distance from the epicenter. In this study, based on the deformation anomaly characteristics, relationship between the seismogenic fault and the fault near the anomaly, and associated quantitative analyses, we concluded that this anomaly may be associated with the 2021 MS7.4 Maduo earthquake. The duration and amplitude of this anomaly matched with the magnitude and epicenter distance of the Maduo earthquake. We have also interpreted the reason why the anomaly occurred near a fault that is obliquely intersected with the seismogenic fault and why the anomaly is located far from the earthquake epicenter.