Benioff Strain Release Before Earthquakes in China: Accelerating or Not?

We systematically analyzed the Benioff strain release before 65 earthquakes with MS over 6.0 in China from 1978 to 2003 to investigate the generality of the widely discussed accelerating moment release (AMR) phenomenon before strong and intermediate-strength earthquakes. In this approach, a strong or intermediate-strength earthquake is selected as a ‘‘target earthquake,’’ and retrospective analysis of seismic activity before the ‘‘target earthquake’’ is performed. Simple searching area (three circular areas with different radius centered at the epicenter of the ‘‘target earthquake’’) and unified temporal range (8 years) are taken in the analysis. Justification of whether AMR exists is by both visual inspection and by power-law curve fitting. It is found that more than 3/5 of the earthquakes under consideration exhibit clear pre-shock AMR property, and 1/3 of the events seem to be sensitive to the searching area. AMR behavior shows apparent focal mechanism dependence: 15 out of 17 dip-slip earthquakes with stable moment release characteristics against the changing of searching areas exhibit AMR behavior, while 16 out of 25 strike-slip earthquakes with stable moment release characteristics exhibit AMR behavior.