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14 Novembre 2001 - Mw 7.9 Kokoxili Earthquake - Kunlun Fault (Tibet) 14 November 2001 - Mw 7.9 |
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 Figure 1 |
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The great earthquake (M = 7.9) that occurred in north-central Tibet (Figure 1) on Wednesday, November 14th was fairly strongly felt in Golmud, though without reported casualties and significant destruction as of today. There is now more information on the surface rupture of the earthquake:According to Xu Xiwei, (pers. comm.), from the China Seismological Bureau, who is now on location with a scientific team investigating the earthquake, the surface break appears to cross the Golmud Lhasa road at the Kunlun.Pass. The large mole-tracks visible on the east-looking photograph of the previous page (Xinhua press) appear to be near this road. This implies that the surface rupture extended along the Kunlun Pass Fault (Kidd and Molnar, 1986), a southeast oriented splay of the main fault, with oblique, thrust and sinistral slip (Van der Woerd et al., in press), Figure 2. However, the locations of the centroid, of the epicenters, of the M 4.3 to 5.7 aftershocks, the duration of the source (about 100 s; Earthquake Research Institute), and the fault-plane solutions imply that the earthquake ruptured mostly the Kusai Hu segment of the main Kunlun Fault (named after the Kusai lake (Hu) in its middle) Figure 2.. This segment of the Kunlun Fault may have ruptured along its entire length (250-270 km; Van der Woerd et al., in press), possibly all the way from Buka Daban Feng to the Kunlun Pass. This is the reason why we tentatively called the 14/11/2001 event "Kokoxili" earthquake, from the name usually given to the large region it has likely shaken. The new 14/11/2001 break would cross the SPOT image chosen as a cover for the August 15, 2000, GRL issue, precisely along the trace that cuts the alluvial fans. |
