Strong historical earthquakes and their relationships with the Tan-Lu fault system and modern seismicity in eastern China

The largest earthquake (Ms 8½) in eastern China occurred near Tancheng in 1668. Six M ≥ 6 earthquakes occurred in this region in historical time. We re-examine the primary historical archives from this region, adding independent constraints such as maps of active faults, local topography, intensity attenuation laws for China, and relevant administrative practices in archiving data, to reassess source parameters (epicenter, magnitude, or maximum intensity). We use the seismic density index—a measure of the clustering of seismicity weighted by source magnitude—to identify candidate zones of present-day clustering of seismicity than may represent a long-term memory of past historical events in an intraplate setting. We update at least one of the source parameters for four of the seven events. The main shock and two aftershocks of the 1668–1672 Ms 8½ Tancheng earthquake sequence locate along the strike of the Tan-Lu fault zone, each associated with significant and contiguous seismic density anomalies whose elliptical contours are elongated along its strike. A third major aftershock (Ms ≈ 6) in this sequence locates some 200 km away from the fault zone. Six of the seven historical events have seismic density anomalies that cannot be explained by aftershocks of modern seismicity (ML  ≤  5.3), and hence are candidate zones for long-lived aftershock sequences. In contrast, there are no significant seismic density anomalies along the section of Tan-Lu fault south of Suqian, despite palaeo-seismic evidence for a Ms 8½ earthquake around 6280 B.C., providing an upper bound to long-term memory of great earthquakes in this region.