In this study, we described a 14km-long paleoearthquakes surface rupture across the salt flats of western Qaidam Basin, 10km south of the Xorkol segment of the central Altyn Tagh Fault, with satellite images interpretation and field investigation methods. The surface rupture strikes on average about N80°E sub-parallel to the main Altyn Tagh Fault, but is composed of several stepping segments with markedly different strike ranging from 68°N~87°E. The surface rupture is marked by pressure ridges, sub-fault strands, tension-gashes, pull-apart and faulted basins, likely caused by left-lateral strike-slip faulting. More than 30 pressure ridges can be distinguished with various rectangular, elliptical or elongated shapes. Most long axis of the ridges are oblique(90°N~140°E)to, but a few are nearly parallel to the surface rupture strike. The ridge sizes vary also, with heights from 1 to 15m, widths from several to 60m, and lengths from 10 to 100m. The overall size of these pressure ridges is similar to those found along the Altyn Tagh Fault, for instance, south of Pingding Shan or across Xorkol. Right-stepping 0.5~1m-deep gashes or sub-faults, with lengths from a few meters to several hundred meters, are distributed obliquely between ridges at an angle reaching 30°. The sub-faults are characterized with SE or NW facing 0.5~1m-high scarps. Several pull-apart and faulted basins are bounded by faults along the eastern part of the surface rupture. One large pull-apart basins are 6~7m deep and 400m wide. A faulted basin, 80m wide, 500m long and 3m deep, is bounded by 2 left-stepping left-lateral faults and 4 right-stepping normal faults. Two to three m-wide gashes are often seen on pressure ridges, and some ridges are left-laterally faulted and cut into several parts, probably owing to the occurrence of repetitive earthquakes. The OSL dating indicates that the most recent rupture might occur during Holocene.
    Southwestwards the rupture trace disappears a few hundred meters north of a south dipping thrust scarp bounding uplifted and folded Plio-Quaternary sediments to the south. Thrust scarps can be followed southwestward for another 12km and suggest a connection with the south Pingding Shan Fault, a left-lateral splay of the main Altyn Tagh Fault. To the northeast the rupture trace progressively veers to the east and is seen cross-cutting the bajada south of Datonggou Nanshan and merging with active thrusts clearly outlined by south facing cumulative scarps across the fans. The geometry of this strike-slip fault trace and the clear young seismic geomorphology typifies the present and tectonically active link between left-lateral strike-slip faulting and thrusting along the eastern termination of the Altyn Tagh Fault, a process responsible for the growth of the Tibetan plateau at its northeastern margin. The discrete relation between thrusting and strike-slip faulting suggests discontinuous transfer of strain from strike-slip faulting to thrusting and thus stepwise northeastward slip-rate decrease along the Altyn Tagh Fault after each strike-slip/thrust junction.

Since the earthquake of M_L3.8 occurring on October 1, 2013 in Ruishan, Weihai City, Shandong Province, the sequence has lasted for about 4 years(Aug. 31, 2017). Seismicity is enhanced or weakened and fluctuated continuously. More than 13250 aftershocks have been recorded in Shandong Seismic Network. During this period, the significant earthquake events were magnitude 4.2(M_L4.7)on January 7, 4.0(M_L4.5)on April 4, M3.6(M_L 4.1)on September 16 in 2014 and M4.6(M_L5.0)on May 22, 2015. The earthquake of M_L5.0 was the largest one in the Rushan sequence so far. In order to strengthen the monitoring of aftershocks, 18 temporary stations were set up near the epicenter at the end of April, 2014(official recording began on May 7)by Shandong Earthquake Agency, which constitutes an intensified network in Rushan that surrounds the four quadrants of the small earthquake concentration area together with 12 fixed stations nearby, and provides an effective data foundation for the refinement of Rushan earthquake sequence.
The velocity structure offers important information related to earthquake location and the focal medium, providing an important basis for understanding the background and mechanism of the earthquake. In this paper, double-difference tomography method is used to relocate the seismic events recorded by more than six stations of Rushan array from May 7, 2014 to December 31, 2016, and the inversion on the P-wave velocity structure of the focal area is conducted. The Hyposat positioning method is used to relocate the absolute position. Only the stations with the first wave arrival time less than 0.1 second are involved in the location. A total of 14165 seismic records are obtained, which is much larger than that recorded by Shandong Seismic Network during the same period with 7708 earthquakes and 2048 localizable ones. A total of 1410 earthquakes with M_L ≥ 1.0 were selected to participate in the inversion. Precise relocation of 1376 earthquakes is obtained by using double-difference tomography, in which, there are 14318 absolute traveltime P waves and 63162 relative travel time P waves. The epicenters are located in distribution along NWW-SEE toward SEE and tend to WS, forming a seismic belt with the length about 3km and width about 1km. The focal depths are mainly concentrated between 4km and 9km, occurring mainly at the edge of the high velocity body, and gradually dispersing with time. It has obvious temporal and spatial cluster characteristics. Compared with the precise relocation of Shandong network, the accuracy of the positioning of Rushan array is higher. The main reason is that the epicenter of Rushan earthquake swarm is near the seaside, and the fixed stations of Shandong Seismic Network are located on the one side of the epicenter. The nearest three stations(RSH, HAY, WED)from the epicenter are Rushan station with epicentral distance about 13km, the Haiyang station with epicentral distance about 33km, and Wendeng station with epicentral distance about 42km. The epicentral distance of the rest stations are more than 75km. In addition, the magnitude of most earthquakes in Rushan sequence is small. The accuracy of phase identification is relatively limited due to the slightly larger epicentral distance of the station HAY and station WED in Shandong Seismic Network. Furthermore, the one-dimensional velocity model used in network location is simple with only the depth and velocity of Moho surface and Conrad surface. The epicentral distances of the 18 temporary stations in Rushan are less than 10km, and the initial phase is clear. The island station set up on the southeast side and the Haiyangsuo station on the southwest side form a comprehensive package for the epicenter. Compared with the double-difference algorithm method, the double-difference tomography method used in this paper is more accurate for the velocity structure, thus can obtain the optimal relocation result and velocity structure.
the velocity structure shows that there are three distinct regions with different velocities in the vicinity of the focal area. The earthquakes mainly occur in the intersection of the three regions and on the side of the high velocity body. With the increase of depth, P wave velocity increases gradually and there are two distinct velocity changes. The aftershock activities basically occur near the dividing line to the high velocity side. The south side is low velocity abnormal body and the north side is high velocity abnormal body. High velocity body becomes shallower from south to north, which coincides with the tectonic conditions of Rushan. Considering the spatial relationships between the epicenter distribution and the high-low velocity body and different lithology of geological structure, and other factors, it is inferred that the location of the epicenter should be the boundary of two different rock bodies, and there may be a hidden fault in the transition zone between high velocity abnormal body and low velocity abnormal body. The interface position of the high-low velocity body, the concentrating area of the aftershocks, is often the stress concentration zone, the medium is relatively weak, and the intensity is low. There is almost no earthquake in the high velocity abnormal body, and the energy accumulated in the high velocity body is released at the peripheral positions. It can be seen that the existence of the high-low velocity body has a certain control effect on the distribution of the aftershocks.

Many small earthquakes occurred intensively and continuously and formed an earthquake sequence after the M_L3.8 earthquake happened at Rushan County, Shandong Province on October 1, 2013. Up to March, 2017, more than 13 000 events have been recorded, with 3 429 locatable shocks, of which 31 events with M_L ≥ 3.0. This sequence is rarely seen in East China for its extraordinary long duration and the extremely high frequency of aftershocks. To track the developing tendency of the earthquake sequence accurately, 20 temporary seismometers were arranged to monitor the sequence activities around the epicenter of the sequence since May 6, 2014. Firstly, this paper adopts double difference method to relocate the 1 418 earthquakes of M_L ≥ 1.0 recorded by temporary seismometers in the Rushan earthquake sequence (May 7, 2014 to December 31, 2016), the result shows that the Rushan earthquake sequence mainly extends along NWW-SEE and forms a rectangular activity belt of about 4km long and 3km wide. In addition, the seismogenic fault of Rushan earthquake sequence stretches along NWW-SEE with nearly vertical strike-slip movement and a small amount of thrust component. Then we apply the P-wave initial motion and CAP to invert the focal mechanism of earthquakes with M_L ≥ 1.5 in the study area. The earthquakes can be divided into several categories, including 3 normal fault earthquakes (0.9%), 3 normal-slip earthquakes (0.9%), 229 strike-slip earthquakes (65.8%), 18 thrust fault earthquakes (5.2%), 37 thrust-slip earthquakes (10.6%)and 58 undefined (16.6%). Most earthquakes had a strike-slip mechanism in Rushan (65.8%), which is one of the intrinsic characteristics of the stress field. According to the focal mechanism solutions, we further utilized the LSIB method (Linear stress inversion bootstrap)to invert the stress tensor of Rushan area. The result shows that the azimuth and plunge of three principal stress (σ₁, σ₂, σ₃) axes are 25°, 10°; 286°, 45°; 125°, 43°, respectively. Based on the stress field inversion results, we calculated the focal mechanism solutions consistency parameter (θ)and the angle (θ₁)between σ₁ and P axis. The trend lines of θ and θ₁ were relatively stable with small fluctuation near the average line over time. Furthermore, the earthquake sequence can be divided into three stages based on θ and θ₁ values. The first stage is before September 16, 2014, and the variation of the θ and θ₁ values is relatively smooth with short period. All focal mechanism solutions of the three M_L ≥ 3.0 earthquakes exhibited consistence. The second stage started from September 16, 2014 to July 1, 2015, the fluctuation range of θ and θ₁ values is larger than that of the first stage with a relative longer period. The last stage is after July 1, 2015, values of θ and θ₁ gradually changed to a periodic change, three out of the four M_L ≥ 3.0 earthquakes (strike-slip type)displayed a good consistency. Spatially, earthquakes occurred mainly in green, yellow-red regions, and the focal mechanism parameters consistency θ was dominant near the green region (around the average value), which presents a steady state, and the spatial locations are concordant with the distribution of θ value. Moreover, all of M_L ≥ 3.0 earthquakes are located in the transitional region from the mean value to lower value area or region below the mean value area, which also indicates the centralized stress field of the region.