Catalog of focal mechanism solutions for the Sichuan and Yunnan region from 2012 to 2022 using the community velocity model of Southwest China

Abstract

The focal mechanism solution is one of the important focal parameters for exploring fault activity and studying regional stress distribution and it has a wide range of applications. The geological structure of the Sichuan-Yunnan region in China is complex, with frequent earthquakes and abundant historical observation data, making it one of the popular areas of concern for scholars. This study utilizes the high-precision community velocity model v2.0 of southwest China, obtained through joint inversion based on multiple data methods. The Cut-And-Paste (CAP) method was employed to fit and invert the observed waveforms of 1475 events with M_L ​≥ ​3.5 in the Sichuan-Yunnan region from January 2012 to December 2022, thereby constructing a catalog of double-couple focal mechanisms. By comparing the focal mechanism inversion results of small earthquakes with those from multiple one-dimensional velocity models and conducting comparative statistical analysis on events below magnitude 4, it has been demonstrated that the model used in this study provides a better fit than one-dimensional models. This contributes to establishing the lower magnitude limit for producing deeper focal mechanism solutions. This study compares the results of larger magnitude earthquakes in the catalog with those published by the Global Centroid-Moment Tensor (GCMT) project and smaller magnitude earthquakes with the catalog released by the Institute of Earthquake Forecasting, China Earthquake Administration. These comparisons serve to validate the accuracy of the catalog results. Leveraging the high-resolution velocity model, this catalog has re-examined the historical earthquake focal mechanism catalog of the Sichuan-Yunnan region. The inversion has yielded reliable results for smaller magnitudes and a greater number of events, providing additional data and support for understanding the regional stress field, active faults, the mechanisms of large earthquake genesis, and earthquake prediction efforts. Consequently, this enhances the depth of scientific research in the Sichuan-Yunnan region.