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Source mechanism of strong aftershocks (Ms≥5.6) of

the 2008/05/12 Wenchuan earthquake and the
implication for seismotectonics
ZHENG Yong1,2, MA HongSheng3, LÜ Jian4, NI SiDao5, LI YingChun6 & WEI ShengJi2
1
Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430077, China;
2
Institute of Geophysics, Chinese Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100086, China;
3
Institute of Earthquake Science, Chinese Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100086, China;
4
Earthquake Administration of Jiangxi Province, Nanchang 330039, China;
5
School of Earth and Space Science, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China;
6
Earthquake Administration of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing 210014, China

Dozens of >M5, hundreds of >M4, and much more >M3 aftershocks occurred after the 2008/05/12
Wenchuan earthquake, which were well recorded by permanent and portable seismic stations. After
relocated with P arrival, the >M3 aftershocks show two trends of distribution, with most of the after-
shocks located along the north-east strike consistent with Longmenshan fault system, yet there is a
north-west trend around the epicenter. It seems that substantially more aftershocks occur in regions
with crystalline bedrocks. Then we collected waveform data from National Digital Seismograph Network
and regional seismograph network of China, and employed “Cut and Paste” method to obtain focal
mechanisms and depths of the big aftershocks (M≥5.6). While most of those aftershocks show thrust
mechanism, there are some strike slip earthquakes in the northern-most end of the rupture. Focal
mechanisms show that the events located on the southern part of central Beichuan-Yingxiu Fault (BY)
are mainly thrust earthquakes, which is consistent with initial mechanism of the main shock rupture. In
the north part the aftershocks along the BY are also dominated by thrust slip, which is quite different
from the right slip rupture of the main shock. Around Qingchuan-Pingwu Fault, the focal mechanisms
are dominated by right-slip rupture with large depths (~18 km). So we suspected that in the north part
the main shock might rupture on two faults: Beichuan Fault and Qingchuan-Pingwu Fault. The complex
pattern of aftershock mechanisms argues for presence of a complicated fault system in the Long-
menshan area.

focal mechanism, seismotectonics, Wenchuan earthquake, cut and paste.

On May 12, 2008, an M8.0 earthquake ruptured 330 km
along Longmenshan Fault zone in Sichuan Province of
China (Figure 1), killed more than 60 thousand people
and ruined millions of buildings. After the main shock,
more than 20000 aftershocks happened by July 24.
Among them, about 200 earthquakes with magnitude 4
to 5, 30 earthquakes with M5 to 6, and 6 earthquakes
with magnitude≥6.0 (catalogued by Chinese National
Seismic Network). Because the buildings and the moun-
tains are heavily destroyed by the main shock, these af-
tershocks can easily cause substantial secondary disas-
ters. Thus it is critically important to study the properties
of the strong aftershocks, and analyze their relationship
to the local geological structures.
Focal mechanisms of aftershocks also provide very
Received October 8, 2008; accepted February 12, 2009
doi: 10.1007/s11430-009-0074-3
†
Corresponding author (email: mhs@seis.ac.cn)
Supported by Knowledge Innovation Project of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant
Nos. KZCX3-SW-153, KZCX2-YW-116-1), National Natural Science Foundation of
China (Grant No. 40604004), and National Basic Technology R & D Program (Grant
No. 2006BAC01B02-01-02).

Citation: Zheng Y, Ma H S, Lü J, et al. Source mechanism of strong aftershocks (Ms≥5.6) of the 2008/05/12 Wenchuan earthquake and the implication for seis-
motectonics. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci, 2009, 52(6): 739-753, doi: 10.1007/s11430-009-0074-3
Figure 1 Distribution of aftershocks with Ms>3.0. The locations are relocated by double-difference method combining with Geiger method. The black
circles are the locations of aftershocks. The size of the circle is corresponding to the magnitude of aftershocks. The solid star represents the epicenter of the
May 12, 2008 Wenchan Mw7.9 earthquake. The dark gray lines represent the Quaternary active faults in the seismogenic area[1]. The words contained by
rectangle box are the abbreviated names of the faults, the detail names of the faults are: MJ, Minjiang Fault; HY, Fuya Fault; HQD, Ha’nan-Qingshanwan
Fault; LRB, Longriba Fault; QC, Qingchuan Fault; PG, Pengxian-Guanxian Fault; BY, Beichuan-Yingxiu Fault; JGA, Jiangyou-Guanxian Fault; JGU,
Jiangyou-Guangyuan Fault; LQS, Longquanshan Fault; CHL, Chaba-Lin’ansi Fault; MW, Maoxian-Wenchuan Fault; MYL, Miyaluo Fault.

long period surface wave[3 6], body wave[7 9] and near

important information of the main shock. They provide
geometric and kinematic features of the mainshock, as
well as regional stress field. So, the focal mechanism
and focal depth are important parameters for seismotec-
tonic studies[2]. The recently upgraded seismic networks,
built by Earthquake Administration of Sichuan, Shaanxi
and Gansu provinces, provide us a good collection of
－ －
field records[10,11]. The Wenchuan earthquake ruptured
along Longmenshan fault zone, which is the boundary
between Sichuan Basin and Tibet Plateau. Because of
the strong block of Sichuan Basin, materials from Ti-
betan Plateau accumulate under Longmen Mou-
ntain[12 15], which causes strong lateral heterogeneity in
－

waveform data for modeling focal mechanism and the crust: the crustal thickness is about 60 km under Ti-
earthquake location. Soon after the main shock, China bet Plateau and 40 km under the Sichuan Basin[16 18].
－

Earthquake Administration (CEA) placed some tempo-
rary seismic stations surrounding the source region.
These stations also provide us additional data to study
the aftershocks. From all these data, we can get the focal
mechanisms of moderate or strong aftershocks and fur-
ther evaluate the risk of the aftershocks by combining
the nature of these aftershocks and local geological
structures.
Currently, several types of seismic waveforms are
used in different methods to study focal mechanism:
Under this circumstance, the arrival times of P-wave and
surface wave are quite different, thus making the tradi-
tional waveform inversion methods hard to obtain reli-
able results.
In recent years, a new waveform inversion method
“Cut and Paste”[19,20] (hereafter called as CAP) was de-
veloped to study the focal mechanism. In this method,
P-wave and its following complexity phases (hereafter
called Pnl) and surface wave are fit separately and joint
waveform mismatch is calculated. By grid search

740 Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753
method we can find the best fit focal mechanism and
focal depth. Because this method uses body wave and
surface wave independently to do the inversion, effects
of heterogeneity in the crust on waveform fit are sub-
stantially suppressed. In this work we just use the data
from stations close to the earthquakes, which ensures a
high signal-to-noise ratio of both Pnl and surface waves,
and high inversion accuracy by relatively small number
of stations with good azimuthal coverage. Under ideal
conditions, people can even get a good result using well
recorded waveforms from only one station nearby the
epicenter[21]. So using this method, we can get reliable
focal mechanisms of major aftershocks, reducing the
influence of crust velocity model.
We first relocated the main shock and aftershocks
with ML ≥3.0. With the waveform data close to the
Wenchuan earthquake fault zone, we applied CAP
method to invert focal mechanism for ≥M5.6 after-
shocks. Combining with the geological setting in the
Longmenshan fault zone, we analyzed the patterns of the
aftershocks and discussed the seismotectonic implica-
tions.
1 Methods
1.1 Aftershock relocation method
In this work the records from Sichuan regional seismic
network, reservoir seismic network and campaign seis-
mic network that was developed after the Wenchuan
earthquake are used to relocate the aftershocks. We first
used Geiger method[22] to locate the raw locations of the
main event and the aftershocks sequences. Then we used
double-difference earthquake location method[23] to re-
locate the aftershocks to obtain accurate source loca-
tions.
1.2 Focal mechanism inversion method
Many researchers use P wave first motion to study focal
mechanism. However, three shortcomings make it hard
to study focal mechanism by using P wave first motion.
1) P wave first motion method needs a large number of
stations with good azimuthal coverage. 2) It is hard to
judge the polarity when stations locate near the azimuth
of the nodal planes. Using waveforms, on the other hand,
the result is more reliable and accurate. And the method
needs relatively fewer stations. Recently, many seis-
mologists use Cut and Paste (CAP) method to do the
inversion using local waveform data. In this method, the
Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753
record is divided into two parts: body wave (Pnl) and
surface wave. We calculate the fit errors between the
synthetic record and the real data, find the best depth
and focal mechanism, and determine the moment tensor
as following.
The displacement from a double-couple source can be
expressed as[20]
3
s (t ) = M 0 ∑ Ai (θ − φs , δ , λ )Gi (t ), (1)
i =1
where i=1, 2, 3 corresponds to three fundamental faults,
i.e., vertical strike-slip, vertical dip-slip, and 45° dip-slip,
Gi are the Green’s functions, Ai are the radiation coef-
ficients and φ is the station azimuth. M0 is the scalar
moment; θ, δ, λ are strike, dip, and rake of the source
that we want to determine from u(t). They can be esti-
mated by solving the equation:
u(t)=s(t). (2)
We define misfit function to measure the difference be-
tween s and u. Using grid search method, we find the
best solution parameters: M0, θ−φs, δ, λ and depth.
Considering geometrical spreading effect, we use
epicenter distance to calibrate misfit function[20]
p
⎛r⎞
e= ⎜ ⎟ ⋅ u−s , (3)
⎝ r0 ⎠
where r is epicenter distance, r0 is reference epicenter
distance, and p is index factor. Generally, for body wave:
p=1; for surface wave: p=0.5.
Previous researches show that CAP method has sev-
eral advantages in determining focal mechanism and
focal depth.
1) It uses both body wave and surface wave. It sepa-
rates the whole waveform into Pnl part and surface wave
part, and allows them to shift in time independently,
which will reduce the errors from velocity model. So the
result is less insensitive to velocity models and lateral
crustal variation. And this character is important in
studying Wenchuan aftershocks because of the strong
heterogeneity under Longmenshan fault zone.
2) We give different weights to Pnl segment and sur-
face wave segment. By giving Pnl segment a greater
weight to avoid the interference of the large surface
wave amplitude, we can get better constraints on focal
mechanism and focal depth.
3) Using distance scaling factor, we compensate the
amplitude decay with distance, and avoid the problem
that data for closest stations dominating inversion re-
sults.
741
2 Data and model density structure of the crust, its spatial resolution is
2°×2°. Combing data from active source seismic profile
2.1 crust velocity model and data from Crust2.0, we can define a relatively suit-
Although CAP method does not require an accurate able velocity model for focal mechanism inversion.
crust velocity model, a good velocity model still helps Because of the significant crust difference between
us a lot for improving the inversion accuracy. In the Sichuan Basin and theWestern Sichuan Plateau, travel
1990s, researchers from Chinese Academy of Sciences time to the stations in east and the west side are quite
conducted an active source experiment and investigated different. We use an average crust velocity model to
crustal velocity profile from Fujian to Heishui. In Si- minimize the effect of the travel difference. To compen-
chuan Province the profile was named as Beibei-Heishui sate travel times of seismic waves in different directions,
profile, which ran across Longmen Mountain[24]. They we use 46 km as the crust depth which is between crust
found that the crust under Longmen Mountain has fol- depth under Sichuan Basin and crust depth under west-
lowing three characteristics. 1) There are distinct layers ern Sichuan. Table 1 is the crust velocity model.
in the crust, from up to bottom: a crystal basement, a
2.2 Distribution of aftershocks and stations
granite layer, a low velocity zone, a basalt layer, a thin
high velocity zone under basalt, and the Moho disconti- After Wenchuan earthquake happened on May 12, 2008,
nuity; 2) there is a low velocity zone at depth between there were about 20000 aftershocks by July 24. In this
20 and 30 km in the crust under central and eastern paper, we analyzed focal mechanisms and focal depths
Longmenshan Fault; 3) the crust is about 40 km under of strong aftershocks with magnitudes larger than Ms5.6,
Sichuan Basin, but more than 50 km under Western Si- and discuss their relationship with geological and seis-
chuan Plateau. mogenic settings. The catalog of these big aftershocks is
In addition to the result of active seismic profile, listed in Table 2. Among them the aftershock happened
Crust2.0 provides us a crucial but reliable velocity and at 14:43:15.0 (Beijing Time) May 12 is only 15 m after
Table 1 Crustal structure of Longmenshan areaa)
Thickness (km) Vs (km/s) Vp (km/s) Density (g/cm3) Qa Qb
1.0 1.2 2.5 2.1 800 400
1.0 2.1 4.0 2.4 800 600
20.0 3.5 6.1 2.75 1000 600
20.0 3.6 6.3 2.8 800 500
4.0 4.0 7.2 3.1 1000 600
− 4.48 8.04 3.32 972 404
a) Qa and Qb are the Q value of P and S wave.

Table 2 Catalog of aftershocks (Ms≥5.6, from CDSN)a)

ID Longitude (°E) Latitude (°N) Occurrence time Magnitude
2008-05-12
1 103.6 31.4 6.0
19:10:58.4
2008-05-13
2 104.0 31.4 5.7
4:08:50.1
2008-05-13
3 103.4 30.9 6.1
15:07:11.0
2008-05-14
4 103.4 31.3 5.6
10:54:36.5
2008-05-16
5 103.2 31.4 5.9
13:25:49.0
2008-05-18
6 105.0 32.23 6.0
1:08:23.4
2008-05-25
7 105.4 32.6 6.4
16:21:46.9
2008-05-27
8 105.6 32．8 5.7
16:37:53.1
2008-07-24
9 105.5 32.8 5.6
3:54:46.5
2008-07-24
10 105.5 32.8 6.0
15:09:28.6
2008-05-12
* 103.5 31.0 6.0
14:43:15.0
a) The ID of * is the event which happened only 15 minutes after the main shock, in this paper we neglected it.

742 Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753
the main shock, most of the local records have been
clipped, and the unclipped waveform data were con-
taminated by waveform from main shock. So in this pa-
per we eliminated this aftershock and only study the
other 10 major aftershocks.
Using CAP method, we studied focal mechanism and
focal depth of aftershocks with regional seismic data.
Currently, there are national seismic stations built by
China Earthquake Administration and provincial broad-
band seismic stations deployed by Sichuan, Shaanxi and
Gansu provinces. The data from national seismic sta-
tions and the 48 broadband stations placed by Sichuan
Province are of the most importance for our focal
mechanism inversion. The seismic records from near
source stations are the most helpful in the inversion of
focal mechanism. For stations within 200 km, seismic
waves travel with a relatively short path, and the sig-
nal-to-noise ratio is high. The waveform is only sensi-
tive to earthquake locations and foal depth, and thus en-
sures the reliability and the precision of focal mecha-
nism. For this reason, data from national seismic stations
with distance less than 450 km and data from regional
stations with focal distance less than 250 km (mostly
200 km) are selected to inverse the focal mechanisms.
Distribution of national seismic stations and regional
seismic stations are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2 Distribution of broadband stations from Digital Seismograph Network and local network stations in Sichuan and surrounding provinces. The
solid triangles are the locations of stations, the star represents the epicenter of the May 12, 2008 Mw7.9 Wenchuan earthquake. The gray lines represent
Quaternary active faults.

Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753 743
2.3 Numerical test for the reliability of CAP method
As there are big variations in the lateral direction of
crustal structure in Longmenshan region, it is crucial to
decrease the effect of crustal lateral heterogeneity on the
result of focal mechanism inversion. In order to test the
reliability of CAP method, we designed following nu-
merical experiment: first, we used four velocity models
(shown in Figure 3(a)) to represent four different areas,
in each area we select three stations, and calculated three
components synthetic seismograms for each of the sta-
tions for an earthquake; then we used an average veloc-
ity model (Figure 3(b)) to inverse the focal mechanism
for the earthquake, and searched the focal depth by grid
search method. In the process of searching focal depth,
we set the focal depth from 1 to 25 km by a depth inter-
val of 1 km, and calculated fit errors for each of the
depth, and set the depth which the minimum fit error
locate in as the focal depth, and set the correspondent
focal mechanism as the focal mechanism of the earth-
quake.
Inversion result shows that the synthetic seismograms
are consistent with the waveforms of different stations in
different areas (shown in Figure 3(d)). The main differ-
ences between the different stations come from the arri-
val time interval between surface waves and Pnl waves.
By cross correlation method the CAP method can shift
the waveforms for Pnl and surface wave segments so
that both of the Pnl and the surface waves are fitted very
well. There is only a slight difference between the am-
plitudes of synthetic seismograms and the data, which is
mainly caused by the receiver functions and has little
affect on the inversion result, so this numerical test
proves the reliability of CAP method. Furthermore, we
can see the errors changes harmonically with the depths,
and we can easily find the minimum error from Figure
3(c), so CAP method is also an efficient method for fo-
cal depth locating.
3 Result and seismotectonics analysis
With the method and data described above, we relocated
the epicenters of the aftershock sequence with ML≥3.0.
The relocated aftershocks are displayed in Figure 1.
Based on the work of Zhao et al.[25], we determined the
crustal velocity structure as Table 3.
We applied the ratio of Vp/Vs=1.71. The stations used
in the relocation work are shown in Figure 4. In this
work we used permanent stations, campaign stations,
those deployed after Wenchuan earthquake, reservoir
stations. The total number of the stations is 75, among
them some are destroyed by the Wenchuan earthquake,
but all of the destroyed stations were repaired after some
weeks. In the relocation work, we calculated 2135
earthquakes, and obtained 1999 relocated locations. The
errors of relocation are: ±1.4 km in E-W direction, ±1.6
km in N-S direction and ±2.7 km in vertical direction.
The mean square deviation is 0.34. A comparison of our
relocation result with the result of Huang et al.[26] shows
no big differences in horizontal directions and vertical
direction.
Furthermore, we inversed the focal mechanisms,
horizontal locations and focal depths of Ms≥5.6 earth-
quakes. We use CAP method to search the focal mecha-
nisms and focal depths of the big aftershocks. The focal
mechanisms of the big aftershocks are listed in Table 4

Table 3 The crustal velocity structure used in relocating aftershocks

Depth (km) 0.0 2.94 8.34 21.70 43.09 68.51
Vp (km/s) 4.88 5.80 6.04 6.82 7.61 8.38

Table 4 Focal mechanisms of the big aftershocks and their relocated locations, the focal depths are determined by grid search of CAP
ID Longitude (°E) Latitude (°N) Depth (km) Magnitude (Mw) Strike 1 (°) Dip1 (°) Rake 1 (°) Strike 2 (°) Dip 2 (°) Rake 2 (°)
1 103.449 31.330 8 5.72 220 73 −166 126 77 −17
2 103.849 31.440 18 5.37 210 24 116 2 69 79
3 103.173 30.991 11 5.56 6 46 55 231 54 121
4 103.369 31.331 3 5.25 290 60 −39 42 57 −143
5 103.187 31.385 12 5.40 148 84 −29 241 61 −173
6 104.899 32.283 12 5.61 62 42 92 239 48 88
7 105.385 32.618 18 5.78 329 90 −9 59 81 −180
8 105.593 32.773 14 5.27 351 81 −28 86 62 −170
9 105.497 32.819 6 5.17 170 65 110 309 32 54
10 105.485 32.826 5 5.4 105 67 −3 196 87 −157

744 Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753
Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753
Figure 3 Synthetics from four models (a) with 5% and 10% variation in velocities. These synthetics (now data) are then fit by the CAP method with an averaged 1D model (b)
where the Pnl are allowed to shift relative to the surface waves (d). These shifts are simply correct for the timing issue. Note that the amplitudes display some disagreements
caused by the receiver functions. With the CAP method, we recover the mechanisms quite well under the distanbance of these velocity variations. (c) The variation of fit errors vs.
depth changes.

745
Figure 4 Distribution of stations which are applied to relocate the aftershocks. The solid inverse triangles are permanent stations, solid circles reservoir
stations, solid triangles campaign stations, solid stars destroyed reservoir stations, solid rectangles destroyed permanent stations. All of these destroyed
stations were repaired in a few weeks after the Wenchuan earthquake.

and shown in Figure 5. Beichuan County to 104.9°E, 32.3°N near Pingwu

3.1 Result of relocated locations of the aftershocks
(ML≥3.0)
Relocated horizontal distribution of aftershocks shows
that almost all of the aftershocks were concentrated near
the rupture fault of Wenchuan Earthquake. From south-
west to northeast, the aftershocks distribute along a belt
about 330 km long, and can be divided into three parts.
The southern part starts from about 103.3°E, 30.8° to
104.4°E, 31.9°N near Beichuan County; in this area the
density of the aftershocks is quite high, and the after-
shocks area is wider than the other two parts. About
20km north to the epicenter of the main shock is a trian-
gle-shaped swarm, where the aftershocks were distrib-
uted from northwest to southeast. The swarm starts from
the east end of NW-SE trend Miyaluo Fault (hereafter
called as MYL) to SW-NE Penguan-Maowen Fault. Fo-
cal depths in this part are deeper than those of the other
two parts, which is consistent to the thrust slip of the
main shock[27].
The middle part of the aftershocks starts from
County. In this area the density of aftershocks is lower
than the other two parts, and the width of the seis-
mogenic area is also narrower than the other two parts.
Huang et al.[26] found that the focal depths in this part
mainly range from 5－15 km; there are quite few earth-
quakes in the upper and the lower crust.
The northern part of the aftershocks starts from
104.9°E, 32.3°N and extends along Qingchuan Fault to
Shaanxi Province. The focal depths are also quite deep;
some of the big earthquakes occurred at 18 km or even
deeper. In this segment the seismicity is getting more
and more active than the other two parts. In last two
months, most of the strong aftershocks occurred in this
segment. Using distribution map and sequence trend we
deduced that Qingchuan-Pingwu Fault is quite active
and capable of generating dangerous aftershocks in the
future.
3.2 Focal mechanisms and seismogenic structures
Based on the relocated locations we further analyzed the
focal mechanisms and focal depths of the ten strong af-

746 Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753
tershocks with M≥5.6. The locations and the focal
mechanisms are shown in Figure 5. The ten strong af-
tershocks were located on the major faults in Longmen-
shan fault zone. This fault zone consists of central rup-
ture faults composed by Beichuan-Yingxiu Fault,
Chaba-Lin’ansi Fault, rear mountain faults (includes
Maowen-Wenchuan Fault) and Qingchuan-Pingwu Fault.
Although there are some smaller aftershocks located on
the front mountain faults (including Jiangyou-Guanxian
Fault and Jiangyou-Beichuan Fault), and geological
survey also found that the Wenchuan main shock not
only ruptured on the central rupture faults, but also rup-
tured at least 60 km on Jiangyou-Guanxian Fault[28];
however, no aftershocks with M≥5.6 were located on
the front mountain faults, which is a quite puzzling
phenomenon.
Figure 5 shows that the distribution of these strong
aftershocks can be clearly divided into two parts: event
ID from 1 to 5 all concentrated in the southern part of
the seismogenic area, and the other 5 events concen-
trated in the northern part of the main shock rupture
zone, especially near Qingchuan-Pingwu Fault and
Beichuan Fault. In order to analyze the focal mecha-
nisms of the aftershocks and their relationship with the
seismogenic faults, we discussed the characteristics of
the aftershocks in the two parts.
1) Focal mechanisms in the south part. In the southern
part five M≥5.6 aftershocks happened from May 12 to
May 16, 2008. Comparing Figure 1 and Figure5 we can
find that Nos. 1, 4 and 5 aftershocks were located in the
triangle-shaped aftershock swarm, and Nos. 2 and 3 on
the Beichuan-Yingxiu Fault. All of the five events hap-
pened between May 12 and May 16, and there are no
strong aftershocks happening in this area since May 16.
Focal mechanisms show that there are basically two
typical types of aftershocks: Nos. 1, 4 and 5 events are
SW-NE right slip earthquakes or NW-SE left slip earth-
quakes, while Nos. 2 and 3 events are SW-NE thrust
earthquakes. It shows that the mechanisms of the after-
shock swarm are quite different in the central thrust
faults. Here we analyzed the focal mechanisms and dis-
cussed their seismogenic tectonics in detail.

Figure 5 Focal mechanisms of Wenchuan earthquake aftershocks with Ms≥5.6. The numbers 1－12 are the indexes of the aftershocks (1―10 are the
same as Table 2). The focal mechanism of the Wenchuan main event comes from the result of Harvard CMT solution. The black lines are the Quaternary
faults. The abbreviated names of the faults are the same as Figure 2.

Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753 747
 No. 1 event happened only seven hours after the M8.0
Wenchuan earthquake. Because of the big magnitude of
the main shock, the low period signals of the main event
existed for very long time. This low frequency phase
overlapped on the waveform of the No. 1 aftershock and
made it difficult to fit the observed data well in the low
frequency band. In order to remove the influence of the
main shock disturbance, we increased the frequency
band of the bandpass filter. Although the surface wave
cannot be fitted quite well, the overall fit error is still
acceptable. From Figure 6 we can see most of the
cross-correlation coefficients in Pnl components are lar-
ger than 75%, and some of them are even larger than
90%. Waveforms in SH component are also fitted well,
but the surface waves are not. The reason for this phe-
nomenon may be the disturbance of the main event. As
we know, the energy in Pnl segment is in higher fre-
quency band, but the long duration waveforms of the
main event are mainly concentrated in low frequency
band, so the disturbance in Pnl seismogram is relatively

Figure 6 Comparison between observed and synthetic waveforms of No.1 Ms6.0 aftershock that happened on 2008/05/12 19:10. The dash lines are the
synthetic waveforms and the solid lines are the observed waveforms. The frequency band of Pnl waveforms are 0.05－0.2 Hz while for surface wave 0.03－
0.10 Hz. The top line illustrates the fit error and one fault plane of the earthquake, the beachball shows the focal mechanism of the event. The small circles
on the beachball are the P locations of the stations. We use lower hemisphere projection to draw the beachball. The first column tells the azimuth, label and
distance of station. The other 5 columns are used to compare the synthetic and observed seismograms, from left to right the phases are: vertical component
of Pnl (Pnl V), radial component of Pnl (Pnl R), vertical component of surface wave, radial surface wave component and SH wave (Tangential).

748 Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753
smaller; for SH component, although the frequency band
is similar to the surface wave, the SH component phase
can only exist in the tangential direction, as the locations
of the No. 1 Ms6.0 aftershock and the Wenchuan earth-
quake do not locate in the same place, the disturbance of
the Wenchuan earthquake in SH component should be
quite small, which makes the SH component relatively
“clean”. For these reasons both of the Pnl and the SH
part waveforms are fitted well. But for surface wave, the
effect of the main event cannot be removed clearly, thus
the fitting coefficients are lower than the other two seg-
ments.
The location of the No. 1 aftershock is close to Maox-
ian-Wenchuan Fault (MW). Geologic surveys show that
this fault is a WS-EN right slip fault. As the strike, dip
and rake angles of this aftershock are 220°, 73° and
−166° respectively, the movement of the fault and the
focal mechanism are in good consistence. So this earth-
quake may occur on the north part of Maoxian-
Wenchuan Fault (MW). If this is true, the dip angle in
the north part of MW fault should be quite steep, and the
movement of the MW fault should be dominated by
right slip, with only a small part of thrust slip component.
The depth of the No. 1 event is 8 km, which means it is
located in the upper crust. Compared with the rupture
depth of the main event (>20 km) (http://www.cea.gov.
cn/manage/html/8a8587881632fa5c0116674a018300cf/_
content/08_05/30/1212118520734.html; http://www. geol.
ucsb.edu/faculty/ji/big_earthquakes/2008/05/12/ShiChua
n.html; Wang et al.[27]), the MW may be shallower than
the central rupture fault.
No. 4 Ms5.6 aftershock and No. 5 Ms5.4 aftershock
are all close to the No. 1 earthquake; relocated location
shows that the distance between the two earthquakes is
less than 10 km, and the No. 5 event is about 20 km far
from No. 1 event. All of the three aftershocks belong to
the triangle -shaped aftershock swarm. But the focal
mechanisms of the three earthquakes exhibit obvious
differences. The Nos. 1 and 5 earthquakes are mainly
composed by right slip ruptures, but in No. 4 event there
are obvious normal fault ruptures. The strike and dip
angles of the three events are also quite different. If
No. 4 event occurred on a NE-SW fault, the dip angle
should be 54°, although the dip angle is quite close to
No. 1 event, but the strike angles have 180o difference.
This difference may imply that the dip angle of MW
varies significantly along vertical direction, because the
depth of No. 4 is only 3 km, or No. 4 happened on an-
Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753
other NW-SE left slip fault. The strike angle of No. 5
aftershock is 148° or 241°, which is coincided with Mi-
yaluo Fault (MYL) and MW respectively. Considering
the depth and the horizontal location of MW fault, we
think No. 5 event may happen on MYL. The main rea-
sons are as follows: (1) MW is quite deep. No. 1 event
shows the dip angle of MW is about 70°, if No. 5 event
happened on MW, the focal depth should be much
deeper than 12 km; (2) the strike angle of No. 5 is more
close to MYL, and the distance between MYL and No. 5
event is closer than that between MW and No. 5 event;
(3) MYL is a NW-SE left slip fault, which is coincided
with focal mechanism of No. 5 event. From Figure 5 we
can see the MYL does not extend to the source region of
No. 5 event, and it may imply that the rupture of the
Wenchuan M8.0 earthquake has induced the failure of
the MYL and extended its length.
Focal mechanisms of aftershocks on central rupture
faults are quite different from those on the MW and
MYL. No. 2 Ms5.7 and No. 3 Ms6.1 aftershock probably
ruptured along BY. Both of those two aftershocks are
thrust slip earthquakes, which is consistent with the
rupture process of the Wenchuan main shock. The dif-
ference of the two aftershocks shows the spatial varia-
tion of BY. The dip angle of MY near No. 2 event is 24°,
whereas near No. 3 event is about 54°. As the focal
depths of Nos. 2 and 3 are 18 and 11 km respectively,
the dip angle of BY in the shallow should be larger than
that in the deep. The relationship between the seis-
mogenic structure and Nos. 2, 3 earthquake can be ex-
pressed as Figure 7(a).
2) Focal mechanisms in the north part. Since May
18th, the strong aftershocks mostly happened near the
north part of the main shock rupture zone. Figure 5
shows that the five strong aftershocks can be classified
into three types: the first type includes No. 6 aftershock,
which is a pure thrust earthquake; and the second type
includes Nos. 7 and 8 aftershocks, which are right slip
events; the third type includes Nos. 9 and 10 events.
These two aftershocks happened on July 24, 70 days
after the main shock, their focal mechanisms and focal
depths are quite different from the other three events.
No. 6 event is a pure thrust earthquake, with strike
and dip angle of 239 and 48 respectively. The location of
this earthquake is quite close to Chaba-Lin’ansi Fault
(CHL), and the strike angle of No. 6 event is also close
to the strike of CHL, we deduced No. 6 aftershock rup-
tured on CHL. As geological survey shows that CHL
749

Figure 7 (a) Sketch map of vertical tectonics between BY and Nos. 2, 3
aftershocks on the southern segment. Because the No. 3 event is shallow
and with large dip angle, and the No. 2 event is deep and with small dip
angle, the dip angle of shallow segment is larger than that of deep segment
on the BY; (b) relationship between four aftershocks (Nos. 7―10) and the
seismotectonics. The figure shows that Nos. 7, 8 events occurred on the
QC, and Nos. 9, 10 aftershocks may occur on other two faults F1, F2 (F1
is with right-lateral slip, and F2 is with thrust slip) which have never been
observed.
belongs to the central rupture faults, it can be deduced
that the central ruptures are thrust faults and ruptures on
these faults should be thrust slip movement. This is in
conflict with the field rupture survery and teleseismic
inversion of the Wenchuan earthquake. Almost all of the
rupture models demonstrate the ruptures in the north part
of rupture zone are dominated by right slip movements;
only weak thrust rupture exists in the north part. So the
Wenchuan earthquake may rupture not only on central
rupture faults and south part of Guanxian-Jiangyou Fault
but also on another right slip fault in the north part.
Qingchuan-Pingwu Fault (QC) may be a candidate of
this fault. As we have mentioned, the Nos. 7 and 8 af-
tershocks are right strike slip earthquakes. And their lo-
cations are quite close to QC. GPS observation[29] shows
QC is a right slip fault, and the materials in Tibetan Pla-
750 Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753
teau flow out along QC and Ha’nan-Qingshanwan Fault
(HQD). So Nos. 7 and 8 aftershocks probably happened
on QC. No. 7 aftershock is the biggest aftershock up to
the present (Ms6.4), and the magnitude of No. 8 is M5.7.
QC is also a steep and deep fault. The dip angle of No. 7
earthquake is 81°, and the focal depth is about 18 km. So
QC is highly active, and the steep and deep fault plane
makes it possible to generate strong aftershocks in the
future. Furthermore, the north part rupture slip of Wen-
chuan mainshock highly resembles the movement of QC,
and there is no such kind of big right slip fault in the
north part. We suspected that the main shock might rup-
ture on QC for quite a long distance, which is consistent
with the result of Wang et al.[27].
After the occurrence of No. 8 strong aftershock on
May 27, there was a two-month vacancy of strong af-
tershocks, which made people think that the strong af-
tershocks will not occur. However, on July 24, there
were three relatively strong aftershocks happened in just
one day, and two of them were bigger than M5.6. In the
following days, there were several aftershocks with
M>4.0 happened. This may be a sign that the activity of
aftershock is getting reactivated, so these earthquakes
should be paid more attention to. As we know there were
some historical examples that the devastating after-
shocks happened two or three months after the main
shock, such as the 1976 Tangshan earthquake.
The relocated locations show Nos. 9 and 10 events
are close to each other, but the focal mechanisms have
big differences. No. 9 event is a thrust earthquake while
No. 10 is a strike-slip earthquake. The strike angle of No.
9 event is NW-SE, which is nearly vertical to QC. Al-
though one node plane of No. 10 event is along SW-NE,
but the strike angle is quite different from that of QC,
and furthermore, the depths of the two earthquakes are
much shallower than those happened on QC, and the
two earthquakes are quite far from QC. For these rea-
sons the two earthquakes might not happen on QC.
However, in Figure 5 there are no obvious faults in this
area, which is quite perplexing. One possible reason for
this phenomenon is that the two earthquakes happened
on two new faults or two faults that we did not find be-
fore. Just as shown in Figure 7(b), the No. 9 event might
happen on F2 fault, a NW-SE thrust fault, and No. 10
earthquake happened on F1 fault, a SW-NE right-slip
fault. From topography (Figure 7(b)) we can find a
NW-SE trench runs across the Longmenshan fault zone
and a SW-NE trench passes through the location of the
earthquakes; these two trenches may be the candidates
for the two unknown faults.
Anyway, these two aftershocks and Nos. 7, 8 earth-
quakes show that the north part of the rupture zone is an
active seismogenic zone. QC and its surrounding areas
are prone to generate new strong aftershocks in the fu-
ture. Focal mechanisms have changed obviously in the
two months after the occurrence of the main shock.
3.3 Error analysis
In our study, the errors mainly come from three aspects.
1) The errors of horizontal and vertical locating. In
the relocationg work, we used phase report as the arrival
time data, and applied double difference method to in-
vert the horizontal locations. So the main errors come
from the error of phase report and the velocity model. In
general, the average error in identify the arrival time
should be smaller than 0.2 s, which is correspondent to
about 1－1.5 km in P wave. The error derived from the
crustal velocity model is hard to evaluate, but the lateral
heterogeneity in the crust may cause 1 km or higher er-
ror to the locating result. So the overall horizontal errors
should be 2－3 km. We inverted the depths of the after-
shocks by local waveform modeling method. The error
for depth locating is about 1－2 km. But the local seis-
mograms are not very sensitive to focal depth, because
focal depth mainly affects surface wave, but the preci-
sion of surface wave is not as high as Pnl wave. On the
contrary, Teleseimic wave is more sensitive to focal
depth because of the separation of P, sP, and pP phase[29].
So if we can combine them with teleseismic seismo-
grams, we will obtain a more accurate focal depth result.
2) The grid search interval. In the process of search-
ing focal mechanism, we set a constant grid search step
for strike, dip and rake angles; the step is 5°. So the pre-
cision of our inversion is no better than 5°. Given the
stability and the disturbance of the velocity structure, 5°
is small enough since 10° accuracy is expected for most
earthquakes.
3) The systematic magnitude error of Chinese Digital
Seismic Network. Comparing the amplitude of Chinese
station record and IRIS station record we find the am-
plitude of Chinese station is smaller than IRIS, which
causes the moment magnitude inversed by Chinese local
seismograms to be about 0.2°－0.3° smaller than that
from IRIS stations. That is why our inverted Mw is rela-
tively smaller than that inversed by USGS and Harvard.
If we fixed this systematic error, our result is quite close
Zheng Y et al. Sci China Ser D-Earth Sci | Jun. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 6 | 739-753
to the results of USGS and Harvard CMT. So when dis-
cussing the magnitude of the earthquake, we should
fixed the systematic error first.
4 Conclusions and discussion
Based on the observation reports and the local seismo-
grams, we relocated the aftershocks (M≥3.0) of Wen-
chuan M8.0 earthquake and 10 strong M≥5.6 after-
shocks. Our analysis shows the following characteris-
tics.
Aftershocks were mainly concentrated in the narrow
belt of rupture fault zone of the Wenchuan M8.0 earth-
quake. Spatial distribution pattern shows that the after-
shocks can be divided into three parts: southern, middle
and northern part. In the southern part the aftershocks
form a triangle-shaped earthquake swarm. The swarm
implies there may be some NW-SE faults or a series of
SW-NE trend faults located in this area. Combining the
focal mechanisms we suspected that the MYL might be
extended by Wenchuan earthquake and generated some
strong aftershocks. In the middle part the number of
earthquakes is quite small and most aftershocks were
concentrated at the depths 5－15 km. Rare events exist
in the shallow and deep crust. In the north part the den-
sity of the aftershocks is almost the same as the south
part, but is different in the time variation. In the first
several days most of the aftershocks happened on the
south part, but the seismic activity in the north is getting
more and more active with time increase. Now most of
the strong aftershocks happened on QC and its sur-
rounding areas.
Aftershocks mainly happened in rocks with higher
strength. From geological studies, we know that the
rocks in this south part are basically strong granite[30], so
this area can accumulate large strain and capable of
generating big earthquakes. But in the middle part,
which is dominated by weak rocks such as limestone or
slate, the shallow part is too weak to accumulate enough
energy to produce big earthquakes. In the north part, the
case is almost the same as in the south, where the rocks
are mainly pre-Sinian quartzite and other relative strong
rocks, QC is the boundary of pre-Sinian quartzite and
phyllite[31], and the strength difference makes it easier to
produce earthquakes. That is why most of the recent
strong aftershocks happened on this fault.
Big aftershocks all happened on the rupture zone of
Wenchuan earthquake. The focal mechanisms show the
751
central rupture faults are thrust faults, and aftershocks on
these faults are dominated by thrust slip. Aftershocks on
MW and QC are right lateral strike slip earthquakes. The
character of No. 4 and No. 5 aftershocks may imply the
MYL is extended by the Wenchuan earthquake so that it
generated some left slip earthquakes.
Time sequence shows the strong aftershocks are
more and more likely to happen in the northern part of
the rupture zone, and the focal mechanisms have
changed significantly from May 2008 to July 2008.
From Nos. 9 and 10 events we found the focal mecha-
nisms are quite different from the other earthquakes
happened in the north part. This is a sign that the seis-
mogenic stress filed may be changed in the recent time,
and some new faults or unknown faults have been reac-
tivated.
By analyzing the location and focal mechanisms of
some big aftershocks we got some general information
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