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The 2008 Great Wenchuan earthquake: insights about its mechanism, triggering, and aftershocks


Nov. 22, 2017, noon - 12:50 p.m.
Geology 1707

Presented By:
Shen, Zheng Kang
UCLA

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It has been almost ten years since the 2008 Mw7.9 Wenchuan, China earthquake, and a lot has been learnt about its tectonic origin, rupture process, and physical mechanisms. Some important questions, however, are still being debated. For example, for the earthquake rupture process, what controlled the slip distribution, and how the rupture was developed? Can we learn something about faulting styles of continental thrust faults from this quake? A large reservoir was built right on the seismogenic Longmen Shan fault 2.7 years before the Wenchuan earthquake, was the quake triggered by water impoundment of the reservoir? If so, by what triggering mechanism? A Mw6.6 Lushan earthquake occurred 5 years after Wenchuan and ~70 km southwest of the Wenchuan surface rupture, was this quake an aftershock of the Wenchuan earthquake? What should be the right criterions to be used for aftershock assessment anyway? In this talk, I will present our undertakings of these questions and some of the answers we have found for them.