Horizontal movement and strain characteristics in Tianshan and its adjacent region with GPS deformation data

Introduction The Tianshan Mountain is the youngest cordillera in the present-day continental Asia, and its tectonic evolution is closely related to the collision and subduction between Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate in the Himalayas orogen since Cenozoic…

Horizontal movement and strain characteristics in Tianshan and its adjacent region with GPS deformation data

Based on the multiple-term horizontal velocity solutions of 230 GPS monitoring sites in Tianshan and its adjacent region, the GPS site velocity fields and crustal horizontal strain fields in the area have been obtained. The results show that the crustal shortening rate of Tianshan, with the longitude (77°±1°)E as the boundary, gradually decreased towards two sides, from the south to the north, indicating that the pushing force of plate becomes weaker along with the fold deformation decreasing of the Tianshan. The direction of principal compressive strain of Tianshan and its adjacent area, nearly NNW, is basically perpendicular to the Tianshan cordillera trend, suggesting the distribution and variation of maximum principal compressive stress in Tianshan and its adjacent region resulted from collision and extrusion of Indian Plate. This paper indicates that the maximum shear strain field mainly concentrates on two areas, one is Isyk lake of North Tianshan, Kyrgyzstan, and the other is the juncture of Jiashi (South Tianshan) and Pamir arc faults. In the above areas, it can be shown from the epicentral distribution that the strong earthquakes mostly occurs at the high shearing strain accumulation field or its edge. Foundation item: National Natural Science Foundation of China (40074024) and Natural Science Foundation of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (200321101).