Left-lateral shear deformation found in southern part of the Gaoligong range in west Yunnan and its tectonic implications

It is generally understood that the Tertiary structural deformation in the Gaoligong range in west Yunnan was under the control of right-lateral shear, resulting from the northward movement of Indian relative to Eurasian. In the southern part of Gaoligong range, however, we have recently found many pieces of evidence of left-lateral shear deformation, featuring a 10 km wide shear zone cutting through all tectonic elements of the range in N-S direction, which possibly occurred in late Tertiary time, and postdated the right-lateral shear. This is a significant discovery for revealing characteristics of the Tertiary intracontinental deformation of the Gaoligong range and the interaction between the Indian and the Eurasian continents.     

Interaction between adjacent left-lateral strike-slip faults and thrust faults: the 1976 Songpan earthquake sequence

Based on the published focal mechanisms we have built the fault model of the main shocks of the 1976 Songpan earthquake sequence and calculated the coseismic Coulomb stress changes in the region. The results show that most of the aftershocks had occurred in the region where the Coulomb stresses had been increased, indicating a triggering relationship between the main shocks and the aftershocks. We also show that the first main shock （Ms = 7.2）, which is a left-lateral slip event, had increased the Coulomb stresses by 5×10^5 Pa at the second main shock （a thrust event with Ms = 6.7）. Therefore, we conclude that the first main shock had triggered the second main shock. The third main shock is also a left-lateral event, however, the triggering relationship between the third main shock and the previous two events is less obvious. General model calculations show that there is a good triggering relationship between adjacent left-lateral slip fault and thrust fault, but triggering between parallel slip faults is rather weak.     

Left-lateral shear deformation found in southern part of the Gaoligong range in west Yunnan and its tectonic implications

LocatedinthesouthwestborderareaofChina ,theGaoligongrangeisauniquegeologicandgeomor phologicfeature ,withitssnow cappedsummitele vatedupto 35 88mabovesealevel.ItgoesupnorthalongtheNuRivertoeasternTibet ,joiningupwiththeBoshulalingrange ,anddownsouthtotheareaofLongling ,whereitdescendsrapidlyandsplitsupintoseverallowandlinearridges .RespectivelytothewestandeastoftherangearetheTengchongandBaoshanblocks ,themainpartofwhich ,anarrowbeltofin tensivelydeformedmetamorphicrocksnamedGaoligongGroup …