Insights into correlation between satellite infrared information and fault activities

Tectonic activities are accompanied with material movement and energy transfer, which definitely change the state of thermal radiation on the ground. Thus it is possible to infer present-day tectonic activities based on variations of the thermal radiation state on the ground. The received satellite infrared information is, however, likely influenced by many kinds of factors. Therefore, the first problem that needs to be solved is to extract information on tectonic activities and eliminate effects of external (non-tectonic) factors. In this study, we firstly make a review of the current studies on this subject, and then present the technical approach and our research goal. Using the data of 20 years from the infrared band of the satellite of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the method we have developed, we investigate fault activities in western China. The results show that the areas with high residual values of land surface brightness temperature (LSBT), which is presumably related to faultings in space, accord usually with the locations of followed major earthquakes. The times of their value growing are also roughly consistent with the beginning of active periods of earthquakes. The low frequency component fields of the LSBT, acquired from wavelet analysis, exhibit well the spatial distributions of active faults. The "heat penetrability index" (HPI) related with enhancement of subsurface thermal information has been expressed well for the backgrounds of accelerated tectonic motions, and some correlations exist between HPI and the local faulting and seismicity. This study provides a new approach to study temporal-spatial evolution of recent activities of faults and their interactions.