Study on Post-Seismic Deformation of Two Strong Earthquakes Occurred in Northern Tibet Plateau

Using the long-swath ENVISAT/ASAR acquisitions from 2003 to 2011, we researched evolution characteristics of the postseismic deformation of two strong earthquakes in the northern part of the Tibet Plateau in the past 20 years, namely the 1997 Mw7.6 Manyi Earthquake and the 2001 Ms8.1 Kokoxili earthquake. The results show that the post-earthquake deformation of the Ms8.1 earthquake in 2001 is quite significant. During the observation period, the average postseismic deformation rate of the fault is 10-16 mm/yr, and shows the dynamic process of decay over time. However, the postseismic deformation of the Manyi earthquake in 1997 was relatively small, and the average deformation rate of the two faults was only 2-4 mm/yr. The main reason for this difference may be that the magnitude of the Manyi earthquake is relatively small. Moreover, the observation time in this paper is relatively long after the earthquake, which further indicates that the post-earthquake deformation decays faster in the early stage.