| Abstract: | At 3:05, September 4, 2017, an ML4.4 earthquake occurred in Lincheng County, Xingtai City, Hebei Province, which was felt obviously by surrounding areas. Approximately 60km away from the hypocenter of Xingtai MS7.2 earthquake in 1966, this event is the most noticeable earthquake in this area in recent years. On the one hand, people are still shocked by the 1966 Xingtai earthquake that caused huge disaster, on the other hand, Lincheng County is lack of strong earthquakes. Therefore, this quake has aroused widespread concerns by the government, society and seismologists. It is necessary to clarify whether the seismogenic structure of this event is consistent with the previous seismicity and whether it has any new implications for the seismic activity and seismic hazard in this region. Therefore, it is of great significance to study its seismogenic mechanism for understanding the earthquake activity in Xingtai region where a MS7.2 earthquake had occurred in 1966.
In this study, the Lincheng earthquake and its aftershocks are relocated using the multi-step locating method, and the focal mechanism and focal depth are determined by the "generalized Cut and Paste"(gCAP)method. The reliability of the results is analyzed based on the data of Hebei regional seismic network. In order to better constrain the focal depth, the depth phase sPL fitting method is applied to the relocation of focal depth. The inversion and constraint results show that aftershocks are mainly distributed along NE direction and dip to SE direction as revealed by depth profiles. Focal depths of aftershocks are concentrated in the depths of 6.5~8.2km with an average of about 7km. The best double-couple solution of the mainshock is 276°, 69° and -40° for strike, dip and slip angle for nodal plane I and 23°, 53° and -153° for nodal plane Ⅱ, respectively, revealing that it is a strike-slip event with a small amount of normal-fault component. The initial rupture depth of mainshock is about 7.5km obtained by the relocation while the centroid depth is 6km derived from gCAP method which was also verified by the seismic depth phase sPL observed by several stations, indicating the earthquake is ruptured from deep to shallow. Combined with the research results on regional geological structure and the seismic sequence relocation results, it is concluded that the nodal plane Ⅱ is the seismogenic fault plane of this earthquake.
There are several active faults around the hypocenter of Lincheng earthquake sequence, however, none of the known faults on the current understanding is completely consistent with the seismogenic fault. To determine the seismogenic mechanism, the lucubrated research of the MS7.2 Xingtai earthquake in 1966 could provide a powerful reference. The seismic tectonic characteristics of the 1966 Xingtai earthquake sequence could be summarized as follows:There are tensional fault in the shallow crust and steep dip hidden fault in the middle and lower crust, however, the two faults are not connected but separated by the shear slip surfaces which are widely distributed in the middle crust; the seismic source is located between the hidden fault in the lower crust and the extensional fault in the upper crust; the earthquake began to rupture in the deep dip fault in the mid-lower crust and then ruptured upward to the extensional fault in the shallow crust, and the two fault systems were broken successively. From the earthquake rupture revealed by the seismic sequence location, the Lincheng earthquake also has the semblable feature of rupturing from deep to shallow. However, due to the much smaller magnitude of this event than that of the 1966 earthquake, the accumulated stress was not high enough to tear the fracture of the detachment surface whose existence in Lincheng region was confirmed clearly by the results of Lincheng-Julu deep reflection seismology and reach to the shallower fault. Therefore, by the revelation of the seismogenic mechanism of the 1966 Xingtai earthquake, the seismogenic fault of Lincheng earthquake is presumed to be a concealed fault possessing a potential of both strike-slip and small normal faulting component and located below the detachment surface in Lincheng area. The tectonic significance indicated by this earthquake is that the event was a stress adjustment of the deep fault and did not lead to the rupture of the shallow fault. Therefore, this area still has potential seismic hazard to a certain extent. |
