Extracting borehole strain precursors associated with the Lushan earthquake through principal component analysis

Abstract

A YRY-4 borehole strainmeter installed at the Guza Station recorded anomalous changes in borehole strain data preceding the Lushan earthquake on April 20, 2013 (UTC) (Mw = 7.0). To identify earthquake-induced abnormal strain changes, we apply principal component analysis (PCA) for the first time to analyse the borehole strain data from the Guza Station. The first principal component eigenvalues and eigenvectors demonstrate that the anomalous days are mainly concentrated within two time periods: 1) October 25-December 30, 2012, and 2) April 15-19, 2013. A combined eigenvalue and eigenvector analysis reveals that the abnormal days exhibit a clustered distribution that is aggregated in the same location for both periods, intuitively indicating that there is a forceful correlation between the two anomalies. We tentatively infer that a similar process contributed to the formation of both anomalies and that these two anomalies are both earthquake precursors associated with the Lushan earthquake. These findings also indicate that the PCA approach exhibits potential for the extraction of earthquake precursor anomalies.