The southern

Qinghai Province 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 pop ...

, China earthquake of April 13, 2010 occurred as a result of

strike-slip faulting 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 ...

in the tectonically complex region of the eastern

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 ...

. This earthquake occurred several hundred kilometers north of the convergent India:

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago ...

plate boundary, where the

Indian Plate The Indian Plate (or India Plate) is a minor tectonic plate straddling the equator in the Eastern Hemisphere. Originally a part of the ancient continent of Gondwana, the Indian Plate broke away from the other fragments of Gondwana , began ...

is moving northwards with respect to Eurasia at a rate of approximately 46 mm/yr. This convergence drives the uplift of the Himalaya Mountains, at a rate of approximately 10 mm/yr, and the Tibetan Plateau, which is an extremely broad region of thickened and uplifted crust sitting above 4.5–5 km. In the region of the April 13 earthquake the Tibetan Plateau is extending and translating east-southeastward within a larger zone of generally north-south

convergence Convergence may refer to: Arts and media Literature *''Convergence'' (book series), edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen *Convergence (comics), "Convergence" (comics), two separate story lines published by DC Comics: **A four-part crossover storyline that ...

. Based on the location, depth, and moment tensor of the event, the Qinghai Province earthquake likely reflects the interplay amongst these major tectonic forces, dominated in this location by southeastward translation. The eastward motion of Tibet with respect to Eurasia further north is accommodated in part by the large intra-continental

Altyn Tagh Altyn-Tagh (also Altun Mountains, Altun Shan; , Pinyin: ''A'erjin Shan'', Wade–Giles: ''A-erh-chin Shan;'' Uyghur'':ئالتۇن تاغ'') is a mountain range in Northwestern China that separates the Eastern Tarim Basin from the Tibetan Plate ...

and

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 ...

strike-slip fault systems. Several large historic events in the Qinghai Province have occurred on the

fault, which runs west-east approximately 300 km to the north of the April 13 event. The April 13 earthquake is one of the largest known historic earthquakes within several hundred kilometers of its location. In 1738, a nearby earthquake of approximately magnitude 6.5 caused over 300 fatalities.http://www.weather.gov.hk/gts/equake/eqpress_e/eqpress_e.20100414.0825.htm

See also