The seismogenic process of the 2016 Meinong earthquake, southwest Taiwan

Abstract

Southwest (SW) Taiwan lies on the deformation front of a plate collision zone. Most earthquakes in this region occur due to deformation of the upper crust, therefore, potential seismic hazards in this area must be considered. On 6 February 2016, a moderate, but disastrous earthquake (M L = 6.6; depth = 14.6 km) occurred in Meinong, a district in the Kaohsiung area of Taiwan. This earthquake produced three cluster-like aftershocks. Among them, two of the aftershocks clusters were not spatially correlated with the main earthquake. Additionally, the trends of these two seismic clusters were not associated with previously known faults or geological structures. Therefore, our major intention is not only to investigate the rupture process of the 2016 Meinong earthquake, but more importantly, to look into the corresponding seismogenic process. In this research, high quality strong-motion data was used to invert the slip distribution on the fault plane using the isochron method. In addition, we relocated aftershocks to further obtain focal mechanisms using a 3D velocity model. Coulomb failure stress maps are calculated for different depth ranges based on the obtained source slip distribution to verify whether the main-shock triggers nearby unknown faults or not. In conclusion, we suggest that there might exist a NW-SE trending, north-dipping fault, which is located north of the source area and may have been triggered by the initial shock. We also conclude that the 2016 Meinong earthquake did trigger the pre-existing normal faults beneath Tainan City.

Strong Ground Motion Simulation of 2016 ML6.6 Meinong, Taiwan, Earthquake Using the Empirical Green's Function Method

“…The used fault plane is different from the other studies. According to some researches (e.g., Jian et al, 2017;Kanamori et al, 2017;Lee et al, 2016;Lin et al, 2018;Wen et al, 2017), the fault plane of the 2016 Meinong earthquake was NW-SE striking and NE dipping with one or two asperities. Besides, from the waveform inversion alone, Kanamori et al (2017) proposed that they cannot determine which one of the two nodal planes was the real fault plane.…”

Coherence Difference Analysis of Sentinel-1 SAR Interferogram to Identify Earthquake-Induced Disasters in Urban Areas

“…After the Meinong earthquake, Wen et al [37] relocated the aftershock catalog and indicated three clusters of aftershocks. The first cluster of aftershocks near the epicenter was 10-20 km in depth, then the second cluster was 5-10 km in depth and 10 km north of the hypocenter.…”

Using Coulomb Stress Changes and Seismic Spectrum Intensities Evaluation of the Seismic Hazard Potential of Meishan Earthquake in Central Taiwan

“…The insights of some potential activities of large earthquakes in the future are correlated with the relationships between Coulomb stress and the triggering of earthquakes [4][5][6][7]. The mainshock-aftershock interactions were concluded in 2013, Nantou earthquakes series [8] and 2016, Meinong earthquakes [9]. Recently, Li et al [10] investigated the earthquake interactions in the central Taiwan using the ∆CFSs effects driven from the past earthquakes (M L ≥ 5.5) from 1900 to 2017.…”