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12 May 2008 M=7.9 Wenchuan, China, earthquake calculated to increase failure stress and seismicity rate on three major fault systems
in press, doi:10.1029/2008GL034903, Geophys. Res. Letts., 2008.
Shinji Toda, Jian Lin, Mustapha Meghraoui, and Ross S. Stein,
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Non-technical summary: The 12 May 2008 Mw=7.9 Wenchuan, China, earthquake devastated cities of Sichuan, claiming at least 69,000 lives. We calculate that the earthquake also brought the major Xianshuihe, Kunlun and Min Jiang faults in the eastern Tibetan Plateau closer to failure at distances 150-400 km from the mainshock rupture (see the left panel in the accompanying figure). Because some portions of the stressed faults have not ruptured in at least a century, the earthquake could trigger or hasten M>7 additional earthquakes, potentially subjecting the regions from Kangding to Daofu, Maqin to Rangtag, and adjacent areas to strong shaking. We use the calculated stress changes and the observed seismicity during the past decade to forecast the rate and likely distribution of potentially damaging shocks during the next decade. The earthquake probability in the analysed region is estimated to be 57-71% for M≥6 shocks during the next decade, and 8-12% for M≥7 shocks.