Rupture process of the Oct. 6, 2008 M(s)6.6 Damxung earthquake, Tibet, China

The rupture process of the Oct. 6, 2008 Damxung earthquake (M(s)6.6) is studied by using the point source and finite fault model. The observed broadband seismograms used in the inversion were retrieved from DMC (Data Manager Center) of China Earthquake Networks Center (CENC) and of Incorporated Research Institute for Seismology (IRIS). Historical earthquake records indicated that this event is one of the strongest earthquakes in central Tibet in recent years, and its epicenter is located around the N-S trended Yadong-Golug rift zone in southern Tibet. Our inversion results show that the earthquake occurred on a west-dipping normal fault with the focal depth of 9.6 km, the fault plane has a strike of 183.3 degrees, a dip of 49.5 degrees. The rupture process lasted about 10 seconds with a maximum slip reaching 130 cm, consistent with a moment release of 2.84 x 10(18) N.m. The dynamic rupture process obtained in this study consists with the crustal movement obtained from GPS observations, implying that this earthquake was triggered by extension stress induced by transition of crustal movement from the direction of NNE to SSE from central southern Tibet to the eastern Himalaya Syntax