The down-faulted basin zone and high disaster risk zone in Shanxi Province, China

Shanxi Province is a region with frequent occurrence of earthquakes, floods and waterlogging, meteorological and geologic hazards, and agrobiohazards in China. The study shows that the formation and development of the down-faulted basin zone in Shanxi Province provides an available condition for preparation and occurrence of these hazards, so that the basin zone becomes an area with frequent occurrence of the hazards, such as earthquakes, floods and waterlogging, meteorological and geologic hazards and agrobiohazards in Shanxi and with their most serious interaction and mutual intensification. Moreover, the basin zone is an area with dense population and most concentrated industrial and agricultural productions and social-economic property in Shanxi. The comprehensive effect of the two factors caused the zone to be a high natural disaster risk area in Shanxi. For reduction of natural disasters and ensuring the sustainable social-economic development in Shanxi, it is necessary to regard the basin zone as an important area for disaster reduction in Shanxi and to carry out integrated disaster reduction.

On the Origin of One Basin-Multiple Mountain Couplings in the Mesozoic-Cenozoic Basin-Range Area in Eastern North China

The basin-range coupling relation is a leading subject of the modern geology. In geometry, relations of this type include couplings between stretched orogenic belt and down-faulted basin, compressional orogenic belt and foreland basin, strike-slip orogenic belt and strike-slip basin and so on. Fault chains are the key for these couplings and there are typical examples for all these cases. The North China down-faulted basin is coupled west with the Taihang uplift, east with the Jiao-Liao Mountains, north with the Yanshan orogenic belt and south with the Dabie orogenic belt, that is to say, the central down-faulted basin and the surrounding orogenic belts bear a coupling relation within a uniform dynamistic system. Study shows that the central down-faulted basin and the North China mantle sub-plume structure have a close relation during their formation. Owing to intensive mantle sub-plume uplifting, the bottom of the lithosphere suffered from resistance, which caused the lithosphere of the eastern North China to be heated, thinned and fault-depressed. Meanwhile, mantle rocks that were detached outwards in the shape of mushroom was dissected by surrounding ductile shearing zones, which lead to decompression and unloading to generate hypomagmas, and a series of mantle-branch structures were formed around the down-faulted basin. There is an obvious comparability among these mantle branch structures (orogenic belts), and they have basin-range coupling relations with the central down-faulted basins.