Contemporary crustal deformation of the Chinese continent and tectonic block model

作者：Min Wang, Zheng‐Kang Shen, Zhijun Niu, Zusheng Zhang, Sun Hanrong, Weijun Gan, Qi Wang, Qun Ren · 发表于：Science China Earth Sciences · 年份：2003 · DOI：10.1360/03dz0003 · 被引用次数：59 · 研究领域：earthquake and tectonic studies、High-pressure geophysics and materials、Geological and Geochemical Analysis

We obtain the preliminary result of crustal deformation velocity field for the Chinese continent by analyzing GPS data from the Crustal Motion Observation Network of China (CMONOC), particularly the data from the regional networks of CMONOC observed in 1999 and 2001. We delineate 9 technically active blocks and 2 broadly distributed deformation zones out of a dense GPS velocity field, and derive block motion Euler poles for the blocks and their relative motion rates. Our result reveals that there are 3 categories of deformation patterns in the Chinese continent. The first category, associated with the interior of the Tibetan Plateau and the Tianshan orogenic belt, shows broadly distributed deformation within the regions. The third category, associated with the Tarim Basin and the region east of the north-south seismic belt of China, shows block-like motion, with deformation accommodated along the block boundaries only. The second category, mainly associated with the borderland of the Tibetan Plateau, such as the Qaidam, Qilian, Xining (in eastern Qinghai), and the Diamond-shaped (in western Sichuan and Yunnan) blocks, has the deformation pattern between the first and the third, i.e. these regions appear to deform block-like, but with smaller sizes and less strength for the blocks. Based on the analysis of the lithospheric structures and the deformation patterns of the regions above, we come to the inference that the deformation modes of the Chinese continental crust are mainl...