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Beware of slowly slipping faults

Nature Geoscience volume 6, pages 323–324 (2013)Cite this article

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The fault zone that hosted the devastating Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 had been assigned a moderate-to-low seismic hazard rating, because it slips slowly. In hindsight, it seems that this type of fault is not necessarily innocuous.

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Figure 1: Beichuan County, Sichuan Province.

© PEI-ZHAN ZHANG

Figure 2: Deformation in the Longmen Shan fault zone.
Figure 3: Fault scarps formed during the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake.

© PEI-ZHAN ZHANG

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Acknowledgements

The studies on the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake have been supported in part by NSFC (40841013, 41030317). I thank Peter Molnar for his constructive comments and encouragement.

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  1. Pei-Zhen Zhang is at the State Key Laboratory of Earthquake Dynamics, Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing 100029, China,

    Pei-Zhen Zhang

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  1. Pei-Zhen Zhang
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Correspondence to Pei-Zhen Zhang.

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Zhang, PZ. Beware of slowly slipping faults. Nature Geosci 6, 323–324 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1811

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