The Dengdengshan and Chijiaciwo faults situate in the northeast flank of Kuantanshan uplift at the eastern terminal of Altyn Tagh fault zone, striking northwest as a whole and extending 19 kilometers and 6.5 kilometers for the Dengdengshan and Chijiaciwo Fault, respectively. Based on satellite image interpretation, trenching, faulted geomorphology surveying and samples dating etc., we researched the new active characteristics of the faults. Three-levels of geomorphic surfaces, i.e. the erosion rock platform, terrace I and terrace Ⅱ, could be found in the northeast side of Kuantanshan Mountain. The Dengdengshan Fault dislocated all geomorphic surfaces except terrace I, and the general height of scarp is about 1.5 meters, with the maximum reaching 2.6 meters. Three paleoseismic events are determined since late Pleistocene through trenching, and the total displacement of three events is about 2.7 meters, the average vertical dislocation of each event changed from 0.5 to 1.2 meters. By collecting age samples and dating, the event Ⅰ occurred about 5ka BP, event Ⅱ occurred about 20ka BP, and event Ⅲ occurred about 35ka BP. The recurrence interval is about 15ka BP; and the vertical slip rate since the late Pleistocene is about 0.04mm/a. The Chijiaciwo Fault, however, dislocated all three geomorphic surfaces, and the general scarp height is about 2.0 meters with the maximum up to 4.0 meters. Three paleoseismic events are determined since late Pleistocene through trenching, and the total displacement of three events is about 3.25 meters, the average vertical dislocation of each event changed from 0.75 to 1.5 meters, and the vertical slip rate since the late Pleistocene is about 0.06mm/a. Although the age constraint of paleoearthquakes on Chijiaciwo Fault is not as good as that of Dengdengshan Fault, the latest event on Chijiaciwo Fault is later than Dengdengshan Fault's. Furthermore, we infer that the recurrence interval of Chijiaciwo Fault is 15ka BP, which is close to that of Dengdengshan Fault. The latest event on Chijiaciwo Fault is later than the Dengdengshan Fault's, and the vertical displacement and the slip rate of a single event in late Quaternary are both larger than that of Dengdengshan Fault. Additionally, a 5-kilometer-long discontinuity segment exists between these two faults and is covered by Quaternary alluvial sand gravel. All these indicate that the activity of the Chijiaciwo Fault and Dengdengshan Fault has obvious segmentation feature. The size of Chijiaciwo Fault and Dengdengshan Fault are small, and the vertical slip rate of 0.04~0.06mm/a is far smaller than that of Qilianshan Fault and the NW-striking faults in Jiuxi Basin. All these indeicate that the tectonic deformation of this region is mainly concentrated on Hexi Corrider and the interior of Tibet Plateau, while the activties of Chijiaciwo and Dengdengshan faults are characterized by slow slip rate, long recurrence interval(more than 10ka)and slow tectonic deformation.
LiDAR, as a newly developed surveying technology in recent decades, has been widely used in engineering survey, protection of cultural relics and topographic measurement, and it has also been gradually introduced to studies of tectonic activities. Although the digital photography technology has been used in the study of palaeoearthquake, the information would be still acquired by traditional geological sketch from trenches. Due to the limitation of photography itself, it is difficult to overcome the distortion of information. With its high information content, accuracy, convenience, safety and easy operation, LiDAR, as a new technology, broadens the access to data and information for palaeoearthquake study.
Fault slip rate is one of the most important subjects in active tectonics research, which reveals the activity and seismic potential of a fault. Due to the improvement of dating precision with the development of dating methods, Holocene geological markers, even the young markers of thousands or hundreds years old, are widely used in fault slip rate calculation. Usually, in strike-slip fault slip rate calculation, there are two types of uncertainties. The first is correspondence of the offset and accumulation time; the second is the lateral erosion of the accumulated offset. In this paper, we suggest that the effect of lateral erosion of the accumulated offset should be removed. We also propose a new method for determining slip rate of strike-slip fault—the differential method. According to analyses of river terrace evolution and displacements accumulation, terrace heights (relative height above river), corresponding ages and measured offsets on the terraces are correlated to each other. We could use the terrace height, corresponding ages and the measured offsets to calculate the offsets that could be used to obtain the fault slip rate. Usually, the heights, ages and offsets of at least three terrace levels are needed in this method. If the terrace height is graded in order, the lateral erosion to each terrace is almost the same. Consequently, direct difference of offset and corresponding ages of the terraces could be used to calculate the fault slip rate. This kind of differential method could avoid the uncertainties from the lateral erosion in fault slip rate determination. By applying the differential method, we got the revised slip rates of 4.7~8.8mm/a on the Altyn Tagh and Kunlun Faults. These low slip rates could fit previous geodetic and geological fault slip rates, shortening rates as well as the millennial recurrence intervals of strong earthquakes along the major segments of these faults.
A possible three-dimensionally highly-curved fault,suspected as the ruptured structure of the Lushan M7.0 earthquake,is revealed by relocated aftershocks. A recent study shows that obvious differences exist between curved fault and straight fault under the ground in regard to dislocation patterns and co-seismic stress responses on the planes ruptured during an earthquake. Infinite half-space dislocation models reveal that the characters of surface displacements due to a curved fault are similar to that from straight reverse fault as a whole. Nevertheless,the horizontal displacements due to slip on a curved fault show closer trend parallel to the direction of regional shortening and higher magnitude than that from a straight fault. Subsequently,the curved fault is suggested to be more capable of transferring horizontal movement of hanging-wall materials in large area. Relative to the case on a straight fault,horizontal displacement in foot-wall area of a curved fault decays more with distance from source fault. On the other hand,the curved fault generates obviously less co-seismic uplift while larger and more extensive surface drop somewhere than the reverse fault or left-lateral reverse fault of the same size but with straight fault planes does. For relatively small magnitude of main shock,it is not easy to determine whether the structure of rupture during Lushan earthquake is highly-curved fault or not due to the sparse observations on co-seismic deformation like GPS.Dense and high-resolution observations should be required to survey the features of focal structure in detail.
In the high-precision GPS positioning applications,the antenna phase center calibration significantly impacts the survey accuracy. This article introduces the experiment study of precise calibration of GPS antenna phase center variations based on automatic survey robot GPS which is funded by Crust Movement Observation Network of China project. In this paper,the main derivations of the principle and implementation procedure are described step by step. Comparing with the known calibration parameters,the horizontal accuracy is estimated about 2mm and the vertical accuracy is estimated about 3mm. This study is of practical significance to improve the accuracy of GPS positioning and to popularize the application of calibration of antenna phase center variation based on survey robot.
No earthquake greater than M6 has been documented on the Yilan-Yitong Fault,and no trace of activity since the late pleistocene has been seen either at the northeastern section of the famed Tanlu grand fault zone in eastern China.Thus this fault is recognized active in the early Quaternary and capable of generating moderate quakes.By analyzing high-resolution satellite images and field work,a 70km-long geomorphic scarp in Tonghe County of Heilongjiang Province and a 10km-long geomorphic scarp in Shulan County of Jilin Province were discovered.The scarps are 1~2m high and offset the young terraces.Subsequently,the trench at Tonghe County revealed fault displacement which almost reaches the surface.The uppermost stratum dislocated by the fault is dated to be 1730±40 years B.P.Analysis of geomorphic feature of the fault scarp and the trench profile suggests that an M≥7 paleoearthquake occurred along the fault since 1730±40 B.P.The trench at Shulan County reveals the faulted late Pleistocene stratum covered by stratum dated to be 2360±40 years B.P.All these data suggest that some segments of Yilan-Yitong Fault are active since Holocene and M7 earthquake occurred.So,further detailed research will be necessary to determine the range of the latest activity of this fault,the time of the rupture and recurrence intervals of major earthquakes.These data will be of great significance for earthquake zonation and assessment of seismic risk in this region.