The 2001 Kunlun earthquake also known as the 2001 Kokoxili earthquake, occurred on 14 November 2001 at 09:26 UTC (17:26 local time), with an

epicenter The epicenter, epicentre () or epicentrum in seismology is the point on the Earth's surface directly above a hypocenter or focus, the point where an earthquake or an underground explosion originates. Surface damage Before the instrumental pe ...

near

Kokoxili Hoh Xil or Kekexili, ( Mongolian for "Blue Ridge", also Aqênganggyai for "Lord of Ten Thousand Mountains"), is an isolated region in the northeastern part of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. On July 7, 2017, the Hoh Xil in Qinghai was listed among the W ...

, close to the border between

Qinghai Qinghai (; alternately romanized as Tsinghai, Ch'inghai), also known as Kokonor, is a landlocked province in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. It is the fourth largest province of China by area and has the third smallest po ...

and

Xinjiang Xinjiang, SASM/GNC: ''Xinjang''; zh, c=, p=Xīnjiāng; formerly romanized as Sinkiang (, ), officially the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR), is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China (PRC), located in the northwes ...

in a remote mountainous region. With a magnitude of 7.8 M_w (8.0 ), it was the most powerful earthquake in

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

for 5 decades. No casualties were reported, presumably due to the very low population density and the lack of high-rise buildings. This earthquake was associated with the longest

surface rupture In seismology, surface rupture (or ground rupture, or ground displacement) is the visible offset of the ground surface when an earthquake rupture along a fault affects the Earth's surface. Surface rupture is opposed by buried rupture, where th ...

ever recorded on land, ~450 km.

Tectonic setting

The Kunlun fault is one of the major sinistral

strike-slip In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

structures that accommodate the eastward motion of the

Tibetan Plateau The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Ti ...

relative to the

Eurasian Plate The Eurasian Plate is a tectonic plate that includes most of the continent of Eurasia (a landmass consisting of the traditional continents of Europe and Asia), with the notable exceptions of the Indian subcontinent, the Arabian subcontinent an ...

. This motion is caused by the lateral spreading of the zone of thickened crust associated with the collision between the

Indian Indian or Indians may refer to: Peoples South Asia * Indian people, people of Indian nationality, or people who have an Indian ancestor ** Non-resident Indian, a citizen of India who has temporarily emigrated to another country * South Asia ...

and Eurasian Plates.

Earthquake

The earthquake rupture began on a relatively small strike-slip fault segment at the western end of the Kunlun fault in the region of the mountain Buka Daban Feng. The rupture propagated to the east via an extensional

stepover The step over (also known as the ''pedalada'', the ''denílson'', or the ''scissors'', or the ''roeder shuffle'') is a dribbling move, or feint, in association football, used to fool a defensive player into thinking the offensive player, in posse ...

before following the main strand of the Kunlun fault. The region of co-seismic deformation (i.e. that occurred during the earthquake) is unusually large, with significant faulting being observed up to 60 km from the main rupture trace. This deformation occurs in two swathes, ca. 20 and 60 km from the main fault trace. Pre-existing lineaments and geomorphological features suggest that this earthquake-triggered displacement occurred on existing faults. The co-seismic

extended for more than 400 km, making it the longest zone of co-seismic surface rupture so far observed. An analysis of the propagation speed indicates that the rupture propagated at a normal velocity along the original segment, but increased in velocity to above the

S wave __NOTOC__ In seismology and other areas involving elastic waves, S waves, secondary waves, or shear waves (sometimes called elastic S waves) are a type of Linear elasticity#Elastic wave, elastic wave and are one of the two main types of elastic ...

velocity after the jump across the extensional stepover and continued at that speed until propagation stopped. This makes the Kunlun earthquake the best documented example of a supershear earthquake. It has been suggested that the unusually wide zone of co-seismic deformation is a direct result of the supershear rupture propagation.

Damage

Due to the remoteness of the region, most reports of damage came from areas hundreds of kilometers from the epicenter. The nearest population centre, the city of

Golmud Golmud, also known by various other romanizations, is a county-level city in the Haixi Mongol and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Qinghai Province, China. It is now the second-largest city in Qinghai and the third largest in the Tibetan ...

, reported severe shaking but no buildings collapsed. Some damage was reported at the construction site for the Qinghai–Tibet railway and along the Qinghai–Tibet highway.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:2001 Kunlun Earthquake 2001 Kunlun

Kunlun The Kunlun Mountains ( zh, s=昆仑山, t=崑崙山, p=Kūnlún Shān, ; ug, كۇئېنلۇن تاغ تىزمىسى / قۇرۇم تاغ تىزمىسى ) constitute one of the longest mountain chains in Asia, extending for more than . In the bro ...

Kunlun Earthquake, 2001 History of Qinghai Supershear earthquakes

Tectonic setting

Earthquake

Damage

See also

References

External links