This paper analyzes various earthquake fault types, mechanism solutions, stress field as well as other geophysical data to study the crust movement in the Tibetan plateau and its tectonic implications. The results show that a lot of normal faulting type earthquakes concentrate in the central Tibetan plateau. Many of them are nearly perfect normal fault events. The strikes of the fault planes of the normal faulting earthquakes are almost in the N-S direction based on the analyses of the equal area projection diagrams of fault plane solutions. It implies that the dislocation slip vectors of the normal faulting type events have quite great components in the E-W direction. The extension is probably an eastward extensional motion, mainly a tectonic active regime in the altitudes of the plateau. The tensional stress in the E-W or WNW-ESE direction predominates the earthquake occurrence in the normal event region of the central plateau. A number of thrust fault and strike-slip fault type earthquakes with strong compressive stress nearly in the NNE-SSW direction occurred on the edges of the plateau. The eastward extensional motion in the Tibetan plateau is attributable to the eastward movement of materials in the upper mantle based on_seismo-tomographic results. The eastward extensional motion in the Tibetan plateau may be related to the eastward extrusion of hotter mantle materials beneath the east boundary of the plateau. The northward motion of the Tibetan plateau shortened in the N-S direction probably encounters strong obstructions at the western and northern margins. Extensional motions from the relaxation of the topography and/or gravitational collapse in the altitudes of the plateau occur hardly in the N-S direction. The obstruction for the plateau to move eastward is rather weak.
The 3-D crustal structure of P-wave velocity in East China is studied based on the data obtained by wide-angle seismic reflection and refraction surveys.The results suggest that a deep Moho disconti-nuity exists in the western zone of the study region,being 35―48 thick.High-velocity structure zones exist in the upper crust shallower than 20 km beneath the Sulu and Dabie regions.The cause of high-velocity zones is attributable to high-pressure metamorphic(HPM) and ultra-high-pressure metamorphic(UHPM) terranes with high velocity and density exhuming up to the upper crust in the Sulu and Dabie orogenies.Anomalous zones of low velocity are in the lower crust,about 30 km beneath the Sulu and Dabie regions.The Moho discontinuity is as deep as 38 km beneath the Dabie region,deeper than those in the surrounding areas.The Moho discontinuity beneath the Sulu orogenic region is also a little deeper than those in its vicinity,being about 32 km.The deep Moho discontinuity zone implies that the low crustal velocity structure zone is in that region.The low-velocity characteristics in the lower crust are probably related to the remnant crustal root of the old mountains due to the orogeny in the Sulu and Dabie regions.The high-velocity anomalous zones in the upper crust and low-velocity anomalous zones in the lower crust beneath the Sulu region are all located northeast of the northern segment of the Tan-Lu fault.However,the high-and low-velocity anomalous zones beneath the Dabie region are located southwest of the southern segment of the Tan-Lu fault.Such a distribution of the velocity-anomalous zones looks to be attributable a left lateral slip motion along the Tan-Lu fault.The distribution pattern of the velocity-anomalous zones may show some evidence for the left strike-slip motion regime of the Tan-Lu fault.
Various earthquake fault types, mechanism solutions, stress field, and other geophysical data were analyzed for study on the crust movement in the Tibetan plateau and its tectonic implications. The results show that numbers of thrust fault and strike-slip fault type earthquakes with strong compressive stress near NNE-SSW direction occurred in the edges around the plateau except the eastern boundary. Some normal faulting type earthquakes concentrate in the Central Tibetan plateau. The strikes of fault planes of thrust and strike-slip faulting earthquakes are almost in the E-W direction based on the analyses of the Wulff stereonet diagrams of fault plane solutions. This implies that the dislocation slip vectors of the thrust and strike-slip faulting type events have quite great components in the N-S direction. The compression motion mainly probably plays the tectonic active regime around the plateau edges. The compressive stress in N-S or NE-SW directions predominates earthquake occurrence in the thrust and strike-slip faulting event region around the plateau. The compressive motion around the Tibetan plateau edge is attributable to the northward motion of the Indian subcontinent plate. The northward motion of the Tibetan plateau shortened in the N-S direction encounters probably strong obstructions at the western and northern margins.
Various earthquake fault types were analyzed for this study on the crust movement in the high region of the Tibetan plateau by analyzing mechanism solutions and stress fields. The results show that a lot of normal faulting type earthquakes are concentrated in the central High Tibetan plateau. Many of them are nearly perfect normal fault events. The strikes of the fault planes of normal faulting earthquakes are almost in an N-S direction based on the analyses of the Wulff stereonet diagrams of fault plane solutions. It implies that the dislocation slip vectors of the normal faulting type events have quite great components in the E-W direction. The extensions probably are an eastward extensional mo- tion, being mainly a tectonic active regime in the plateau altitudes. The tensional stress in the E-W or NWW-SEE direction predominates earthquake occurrences in the normal event region of the central plateau. The eastward extensional motion in the high Tibetan plateau is attributable to the gravitational collapse of the high plateau and the eastward extrusion of hotter mantle materials beneath the east boundary of the plateau. Extensional motions from the relaxation of the topography and/or gravitational collapse in the high plateau hardly occurred along the N-S direction. The obstruction for the plateau to move eastward is rather weak.
In the present analysis on the relationships among the depth of lithosphere brittle fracture, seismotectonics and geothermal anomalous active in Tibetan plateau were investigated using the seismic dada from ISC and Chinese seismic net and geothermal data. The results suggest that the region of anomalously geothermal activity almost coincides with that of the normal faulting type earthquake. The geothermal anomaly activity region coincides spatially with that of the events deeper than 60 km as well as. The normal faulting earthquakes may be mainly tectonic activity regimes until 110 km deep in the thermal anomaly region. The strike directions of events are likely the N-S direction, coinciding with the strike of the thermal anomaly active belts. The earthquakes align along the normal faults and faulted-depression zone with the N-S direction. The thermal anomaly activity also distributes along the faulted-depression zone. Many events deeper than 60 km exist in the anomalously geothermal activity region in the plateau. Events extend to bottom of the lithosphere of 110 km from the surface, like columnar seismic crowd. The lithosphere extends along the E-W direction due to the E-W extensional stress in the central and southern Tibetan plateau, altitude of the plateau. The t6nsional stress in the E-W results in the lithosphere fractures and the normal faults striking N-S direction, grabens and faulted-depression zones. Thermal material from the asthenosphere wells upward to the surface along deep seismic fractures and faults through the thick crust. The anomalously thermal activities are attributable to the upwelling thermal material from the mantle in the altitude of Tibetan plateau.
