Gravity Changes Before Large Earthquakes in China： 1998-2005

作者：ZHAN F. Benjamin,ZHU Yiqing,NING Jinsheng,ZHOU Jiangcun,LIANG Weifeng,XU Yunma

摘要：Although it is well known that coseismic gravity changes take place during an earthquake, previous research has not yielded convincing evidence demonstrating that significant gravity changes occur before large earthquakes. Furthermore, even if we suspect that gravity changes occur before large earthquakes, we have yet to demonstrate how to consistently observe these changes for useful earthquake forecast that would bring benefits to society. We analyzed ground gravity survey data obtained in 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2005 at stations of the Crustal Movement Observation Network of China (CMONOC) and examined gravity changes be-fore the occurrence of nine large (Ms≥6.8) earthquakes that ruptured within or near mainland China and Taiwan from November 2001 to August 2008. Results from this analysis show that significant gravity changes occurred across a large region before each of these nine large earthquakes, and these changes were detected by repeated ground gravity surveys through CMONOC. Although these gravity changes were significant, more research is needed to investigate whether these gravity changes could be viewed as precursors of large earthquakes. Limitations and uncertainties in the data include sparseness of the gravity monitoring network, long time intervals between consecutive gravity surveys, inevitable measurement errors, hydrological effects on gravity, and effects of vertical crustal movements on gravity. Based on these observations, we make several recommendations about possible future direc-tions in earthquake-related research using gravity monitoring data.

发文机构：School of Resource and Envirorunental Science Texas Center for Geographic Information Science Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics Second Crust Monitoring and Application Center School of Geodesy and Geomatics

关键词：earthquakegravityseismologyChinaWenchuangeodesyGIS

分类号： P227[天文地球—大地测量学与测量工程][天文地球—测绘科学与技术]P208[天文地球—地图制图学与地理信息工程][天文地球—测绘科学与技术]