Institute of Geophysics, State Seismological Bureau, Beijing, P.R. China

The majority of anomalies in self-potential at 7 stations within 160 km from the epicentre showed a similar pattern of rapid onset and slow decay during and before the M 7.8 Tangshan earthquake of 1976. Considering that some of these anomalies associated with episodical spouting from boreholes or the increase in pore pressure in wells, observed anomalies are streaming potential generated by local events of sudden movements and diffusion process of high-pressure fluid in parallel faults. These transient events triggered by tidal forces exhibited a periodic nature and the statistical phenomenon to migrate towards the epicentre about one month before the earthquake. As a result of events, the pore pressure reached its final equilibrium state and was higher than that in the initial state in a large enough section of the fault region. Consequently, local effective shear strength of the material in the fault zone decreased and finally the catastrophic earthquake was induced. Similar phenomena also occurred one month before the M 7.3 Haichen earthquake of 1975. Therefore, a short term earthquake prediction can be made by electrical measurements, which are the kind of geophysical measurements most closely related to pore fluid behaviors of the deep crust.

Georesistivity precursors and corresponding coseismic effects to the Tangshan earthquake of 1976 are given as follows: 1) resistivity measurements with accuracies of 0.5% or better for over 20 years show that resistivity decreases of several percent, which began approximately 3 years prior to the Tangshan earthquake, were larger than the background fluctuations and hence statistically significant. An outstanding example of an intermediate-term resistivity precursor is given. 2) Georesistivity decreases of several percent observed simultaneously at 9 stations beginning 2-3 years prior to the 1976 Tangshan earthquake are such a pervasive phenomenon that the mean decrease, in percent, can be contoured on a map of the Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan region. This shows the maximum decrease centered over the epicenter. 3) Corresponding coseismic resistivity changes, ∆ρc/ρc, during the M 7.8 Tangshan earthquake were observed at all 16 stations within 240 km from the epicentre. These observed ∆ρc/ρc are opposite in sense but similar in spatial distribution to corresponding georesistivity precursors. This observation suggests that the Tangshan earthquake is a rebound process. Calculation indicates that these georesistivity precursors could be represented by a virtual dislocation, of opposite sign to the real dislocation produced at the time of the Tangshan earthquake. These reported ∆ρc/ρc offer very convincing evidence for accepting corresponding anomalies prior to the earthquake as its precursors. 4) It is inferred from observed anisotropic decreases in georesistivity that before the Tangshan earthquake the crust was compressed and that the angle between the maximum principal stress σ1 and the earthquake fault was about 80° before the earthquake i.e., the fault was locked by the σ1 which is almost normal to the fault.

In the present paper, the influence of the rheological process on the Anisotropy of Magnetic Susceptibility (AMS) of rocks is studied experimentally. The cylindrical samples of quartz-magnetite rock undergo a process under the confining stress of 300 MPa, temperature of 500-800 °C and strain rate of 5 ´ 10-5 - 1 ´ 10-4/s. The residual deformation after the above process ranges 9-42%, depending on the experimental condition. It is found that the magnetic susceptibilities and the shapes of magnetic grains in these samples are almost isotropic before deformation. After being deformed, these samples show certain amounts of anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility and the axes of maximum principal susceptibilities deviate from the original ones more or less. Furthermore, the grains become oblate-ellipsoidal and a certain preferred orientation occurs. The grain shape anisotropy seems to be the main reason for AMS formation. It appears that there is a limitation of the piezomagnetic theory in explaining some tectonomagnetic phenomena. The results obtained in this study imply that ductile deformation at high temperature and pressure in depth during a long time-process may result in another kind of response in rock magnetism, which could be a new mechanism of tectonomagnetic variation.