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Abstract:
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The 2008 Ms 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake was the most disastrous event in China since the 1976 Tangshan M 7.8 earthquake. More than 80,000 people were killed, over 370,000 people were injured, and the total economic loss reached more than US $100 billion, as reported by the China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC; 2008). The earthquake initiated at 14:28:04 Beijing Time (06:28:04 UTC), with epicenter location at 31.00° N, 103.37° E, and depth of 14.5 km. The rupture was discontinuous with a total length of 340 km (Zhang et al., 2010) and with maximum right lateral and vertical displacements of 5 and 4.8 m, respectively (Xu et al., 2008). High‐rate sampling by continuous Global Positioning Systems (GPS) stations located on the Chinese mainland (Fig. 1) recorded the strong ground motion wave forms including the dynamic and static components. It was the first time that a strong earthquake (M≥8) was recorded by high‐rate GPS on the Chinese mainland.
Figure 1.
(a) Maps showing the location of the 2008 Wenchuan MS 8.0 earthquake, permanent high‐rate GPS stations (blue triangle), and accelerometer stations (red dot). Epicenter is located at (103.37°, 31.00°) according to CENC (2008). The fault strike is 229°. The GPS stations are part of the following five networks: (b) Sichuan GPS network (green triangles), with station distance to the epicenter in the range of 38–300 km; and Chongqing GPS network (251–58 km); (c) Kunming GPS network (651–709 km); (d) Tianjin GPS network (1500–1629 km); and (e) Shanghai GPS network (1700–1760 km).
Over the past decade, with the improvement of receiver and data‐processing technologies, high‐rate GPS observations have gained an increasing importance in the field of earthquake geodesy. A number of large …
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