关键词: 地表破裂, 几何结构, 同震位移, 相关性

Abstract:

The existence of asperity has been confirmed by heterogeneously distributed seismic activities along the slipping surface associated with recent huge earthquakes, such as the M8.0 2008 Wenchuan earthquake and M9.0 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake. The location of asperity embedded in the seismogenic depth always corresponds to the area of high value of the co-seismic displacement and stress drop where the elastic energy is accumulated during the inter-seismic periods. Fault segmentation is an essential step for seismic hazard assessment. So far, the fault trace is dominantly segmented by considering its geometric features, such as bends and steps. But the connection between the asperity and geometric feature of the slipping surface is under dispute. Research on correlation between geometric feature of surface rupture and co-seismic displacement is of great significance to understand the relationship of seismicity distribution to geometric morphology of sliding surface. To scrutinize the correlation between the geometric feature and co-seismic displacement, we compiled 28 earthquake cases among which there are 19 strike-slip events and 9 dip-slip events. These cases are mainly collected from the published investigation reports and research papers after the earthquake occurred. All the earthquakes’ magnitude is between M_W5.4~8.1 except for the M_W5.4 Ernablla earthquake. The range of the rupture length lies between 4.5~426km. Each case contains surface rupture trace mapped in detail with corresponding distribution of co-seismic displacement, but the rupture maps vary in projected coordinate system. So, in order to obtain uniform vector graphics for the following data processing, firstly, vectorization of the surface rupture traces associated with each case should be conducted, and secondly, the vector graphics are transformed into identical geographic coordinate system, i.e. WGS1984-UTM projected coordinate system, and detrended to adjust its fitted trend line into horizontal orientation. The geometric features of surface rupture trace are characterized from three aspects, i.e. strike change, step and roughness. Previous studies about the rupture geometry always describe the characteristics from the whole trace length, consequently, the interior change of the geometric characteristics of the rupture is overlooked. In order to solve this problem, a technique of moving window with a specified window size and moving step is performed to quantify the change of feature values along the fault strike. The selected window size would directly affect the quantified result of the geometric feature. There are two contrary effects, large window size would neglect the detail characteristics of the trace, and small window size would split the continuity of the target object and increase the noise component. So we tested a set of sizes on the Gobi-Altay case to select a proper value and choose 1/25 of the whole rupture length as a proper scaling. Here, we utilize the included angle value of the fitted line in the adjoining windows, Coefficient of variation and the intercept value of the PSD(Power Spectra Density)for characterizing the change of strike, step size and roughness. The rupture trace is extracted within every moving window to calculate the aforementioned feature values. Then we can obtain three sets of data from every rupture trace. The co-seismic displacement is averaged in piecewise with uniform interval and moving step along the fault strike. Then, the correlations between three kinds of feature value and the co-seismic displacement are calculated respectively, as well as the P-value of correlation coefficient significant test.
We divided cases into two groups according to the slip mode, i.e. strike-slip group and dip-slip group, and contrast their results. In the correlation result list, there is an apparent discrepancy in correlation values between the two groups. The values of the strike-slip group mostly show negative, which indicates that geometric feature of the rupture trace is in inverse proportion to the displacement. In dip-slip group, the values distribute around zero, which suggests the geometric features is irrelevant to the displacement. Through the analysis of the correlation between the surface rupture and co-seismic displacement, the following conclusions can be reached: 1)In comparison with the dip-slip earthquake type, the characteristics of surface rupture of strike-slip earthquakes have a higher-level of correlation with the distribution of the co-seismic displacement, which suggests that the geometric features of strike-slip active faults may have a higher reference value in the fault-segmentation research than the dip-slip type; 2)In most strike-slip events, there is a negative correlation between the geometric features and the co-seismic displacement, which implicates that the higher the feature values of the steps, strike change and roughness, the lower the corresponding co-seismic displacement is; 3)Among the three quantified features of the surface rupture trace, the ranking of relevancy between them and the co-seismic displacement is: step size>strike change>roughness.

Key words: surface rupture, geometric feature, co-seismic displacement, correlation