Millennial recurrence of large earthquakes on the Haiyuan Fault near Songshan, Gansu Province, China

The Haiyuan fault is a major active left-lateral fault along the northeast edge of the Tibet-Qinghai Plateau. Studying this fault is important in understanding current deformation of the plateau and the mechanics of continental deformation in general. Previous studies have mostly focused on the slip rate of the fault. Paleoseismic investigations on the fault are sparse, and have been targeted mostly at the stretch of the fault that ruptured in the 1920 M approximately 8.6 earthquake in Ningxia Province. To investigate the millennial seismic history of the western Haiyuan fault, we opened two trenches in a small pull-apart basin near Songshan, in Gansu Province. The excavation exposes sedimentary layers of alternating colors: dark brown silty to clayey deposit and light yellowish brown layers of coarser-grained sandy deposit. The main fault zone is readily recognizable by the disruption and tilting of the layers. Six paleoseismic events are identified and named SS1 through SS6, from youngest to oldest. Charcoal is abundant, yet generally tiny in the shallowest parts of the trench exposures. Thirteen samples were dated to constrain the ages of paleoseismic events. All six events have occurred during the past 3500-3900 years. The horizontal offsets associated with these events are poorly known. However, events SS3 to SS6 appear to be large ones, judging from comparison of vertical separations and widths of fault zones. The youngest event SS1 instead seems to be a minor one, probably the 1990 M (sub w) 5.8 earthquake. Thus, four large events in 3500-3900 years would imply a recurrence interval of about 1000 years. Three events SS2 to SS4 prior to 1990 occurred sometime during 1440-1640 A.D., shortly after 890-1000 A.D. and 0-410 A.D., respectively. We tentatively associate them with the 1514 A.D., 1092 A.D., and 143 or 374 A.D. historical earthquakes. Taking 10+ or -2 m of slip for large events (SS3 and SS4), comparable to the 1920 M >8 Haiyuan earthquake, their occurrence times would be consistent with the long-term 12+ or -4 mm/yr estimate of Lasserre et al. (1999). However, a more realistic evaluation of slip rate and its possible change with time requires a more rigorous determination of coseismic slip amounts of past earthquakes.