An accurate relocation of the 2017 Ms 7.0 Sichuan Jiuzhaigou earthquake sequence and the seismicity analysis

The 2017 Ms 7.0 Sichuan Jiuzhaigou earthquake occurred at the intersection of the Tazang, Minjiang, and Huya faults on the eastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau. Since it occurred on an unmarked blind fault, it is still a controversial issue whether the fault, which triggered the earthquake, was the extension of the East Kunlun fault or the northern branch of the Huya fault. Therefore, the accurate source location is of great significance for studying the deep distribution of seismogenic faults and seismicity analysis.

We have not only collected seismic phase arrival data recorded by 24 permanent stations and 6 temporary stations, but also picked up the seismic waveform data recorded by partial permanent stations in this study. Using absolute seismic location method and relative seismic location method, we relocated the earthquake events with magnitude greater than or equal to 1.0 occurred in the Jiuzhaigou area from August to December 2017. In order to ensure reliable data quality, we selected 23422 P-wave absolute arrival times, 24734 S-wave absolute arrival times and 124519 high quality P-waveform cross correlation data of 3449 earthquake events for relocation research.

The mean value of root mean square residuals of travel time of all earthquakes decrease from 0.21s to 0.08s after relocation. The average location errors in the E-W, N-S, and vertical directions are 0.11km, 0.12km, and 0.16km, respectively. Ninety-nine percent of the earthquake events are distributed in the depth range of 1-25 km, and the dominant distribution range is 5-15 km. The result shows that the earthquakes are distributed along the strike of northwest and southeast, and the Jiuzhaigou mainshock divided these events into two clusters: northwest and southeast. From the parallel strike section, we conclude that the depth of the northwest seismic cluster is shallow with the depth range of 2-15 km, and the depth of the southeast seismic cluster is deeper with the depth range of 6-18 km. Moreover, the number of aftershocks in the northwest cluster is greater than that in the southeast cluster, but after an M 4.9 aftershock occurred in the northwest cluster on the ninety-first day after the Jiuzhaigou mainshock, the number of aftershocks in the northwest cluster began to decrease. The result provides a basis for studying the seismogenic background and seismicity of the Jiuzhaigou earthquake.