Deciphering stress perturbations throughout the 2025 M<sub>w</sub> 7.1 Dingri, Southern Xizang Earthquake.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41545364.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-68128-y and PMC identifier 12877055.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-ND.
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Abstract
The 2025 moment magnitude (M<sub>w</sub>) 7.1 Dingri earthquake in Southern Xizang, China, caused severe devastation and exhibited a complex stress evolution. Its northward unilateral rupture along the twisted, west-dipping graben edge generated ~2 MPa of dynamic stress, triggering blind coseismic slip on an east-dipping fault. Coseismic stress perturbations activated over 50 previously unmapped fault segments, mostly with aseismic slip, while also inducing an early viscoelastic response in the weak middle-to-lower crustal layer below ~20 km depth. Here we explain these behaviours by deciphering the stress perturbations through earthquake cycle observations and models. A major implication is that tracking stress evolution throughout an earthquake provides critical insights into earthquake mechanics.