Abstract
The large scales of co-seismic water level changes in mainland China were observed in response to the tragic 2008 Ms 8.0 Wenchuan earthquake. To better understand the mechanism of these hydrogeological phenomena, groundwater-level data at 17 confined wells, with an epicentral distance of <500 km, were collected. We compare the static strain predicted by dislocation theory with the volumetric strain calculated by the tide effect of the groundwater based on poroelastic theory. The results show that the sign of the co-seismic groundwater level change is consistent with the sign predicted by dislocation theory. Additionally, the magnitude of the strain calculated by the two methods is also concordant in half of the wells. In the rest of the wells, the strains inversed from the groundwater level are one or two orders of magnitude larger than the fault dislocation model. These wells mostly have an epicenter distance larger than 300 km; therefore, the dynamic stress induced by the seismic wave may be responsible for the co-seismic water level changes in these wells. According to these results, we roughly estimate that the effect range of the static stress is approximately 300 km for the Wenchuan earthquake, and the dynamic stresses dominate beyond this epicenter distance. In addition, geological and hydrogeological conditions and other mechanisms may be responsible for these changes.
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Acknowledgments
We gratefully acknowledge comments and helpful information from Dr. Shemin Ge, Dr. Brian Mitchell and two anonymous reviewers, which made the quality of manuscript considerably improved. This work is supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (40930637), Special Project of Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration (DF-IGCEA-0608-2-10) and Special Project of Seismological Community (200808079).
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Shi, Z., Wang, G. & Liu, C. Co-Seismic Groundwater Level Changes Induced by the May 12, 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake in the Near Field. Pure Appl. Geophys. 170, 1773–1783 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-012-0606-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-012-0606-1