Seismo-Deformation Anomalies Associated with the M6.1 Ludian Earthquake on August 3, 2014

Abstract

A time-frequency method retrieving the acceleration changes in the terminal stage of theM6.1 Ludian earthquake in China is discussed in this article. The non-linear, non-stationaryseismo-demformation was obtained by using the Hilbert–Huang transform and followed by aband-pass filter. We found that the temporal evolution of the residual GNSS-derived orientationexhibits a unique disorder-alignment-disorder sequence days before the earthquake whichcorresponds well with the four stages of an earthquake: elastic strain buildup, crack developments,deformation, and the terminal stage of material failure. The disordering orientations are graduallyaligned with a common direction a few days before the terminal stage. This common direction isconsistent with the most compressive axis derived from the seismological method. In addition, theregion of the stress accumulation, as identified by the size of the disordered orientation, isgenerally consistent with the earthquake preparation zones estimated by using numerical models.