Ten Years After the Wenchuan Earthquake: New Insights Into the Geodynamics of the Eastern Tibet

Abstract

In 2008, the Mw 7.9 Wenchuan earthquake killed >80,000 and injured more than 370,000 people in the province of Sichuan, China. About 5 years later, Mw 6.6 Lushan earthquake occurred on 20 April 2013, only ~90 km further south. More recently, in 2017, a third event, Mw 6.5 Jiuzhaigou earthquake, occurred ~250 km north of the Wenchuan earthquake epicenter. These events were all along the Longmen Shan thrust belt in eastern Tibet. The questions posed by these events still reverberate in the Chinese and international geoscience communities. In this special section, we summarize and report new data sets, observations, and modeling results of the eastern Tibet during the last decade. It covers the tectonics of eastern Tibet, the seismology, and the surface response of the earthquake. All these contributions will provide new insights into the geodynamics of the eastern Tibet. We further highlight a number of outstanding questions that remain to be addressed.