Relocation and seismogenic structure of the 1998 Zhangbei-Shangyi earthquake sequence

On January 10, 1998, an earthquake of ML=6.2 occurred in the border region between the Zhangbei County and Shangyi County of Hebei Province. This earthquake has been the most significant event occurred in the northern China in the recent years. Historical seismicity in the Zhangbei-Shangyi region was very low. In the epicentral area no active fault capable of generating a moderate earthquake like this event was found. The earthquake locations of the main shock and its aftershocks of the Zhangbei-Shangyi earthquake sequence given by several agencies and authors were diverse and the resulted hypocentral distribution revealed no any dominant horizontal lineation. To study the seismogenic structure of the Zhangbei-Shangyi earthquake, in this paper the main shock and its aftershocks with ML≥3.0 of the Zhangbei-Shangyi earthquake sequence were relocated using the master event relative relocation algorithm. The relocated results show that the epicentral location of the main shock was 41.145°N, 114.462°E, which was located 4 km to the NE of the macro-epicenter of the main shock. The relocated focal depth of the main shock was 15 km. The hypocenters of the aftershocks distributed in a nearly vertical N20°E-striking plane and its vicinity. The relocated results of the Zhangbei-Shangyi earthquake sequence clearly indicated that the seismogenic structure of this event was a nearly N-S- to NNE-SSW-striking fault with right-lateral and reverse slip, and that the occurrence of this event was associated with the horizontal and ENE-oriented compressive tectonic stress, which was compatible with the tectonic stress field in the northern China.