eprintid: 1309 rev_number: 18 eprint_status: archive userid: 2 dir: disk0/00/00/13/09 datestamp: 2015-02-10 12:54:05 lastmod: 2017-02-08 12:21:34 status_changed: 2015-04-27 12:10:39 type: article metadata_visibility: show creators_name: Ge, Shemin creators_name: Liu, Mian creators_name: Lu, Ning creators_name: Godt, Jonathan W. creators_name: Luo, Gang corp_creators: Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, USA corp_creators: Department of Geological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA corp_creators: Division of Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado, USA corp_creators: U.S. Geological Survey, Denver, Colorado, USA corp_creators: Department of Geological Sciences, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri, USA title: Did the Zipingpu Reservoir trigger the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake? ispublished: pub subjects: RC2 subjects: SR subjects: SS divisions: EPOS-P full_text_status: none keywords: Reserior triggered seismicity, Coulomb stress, Rihand reservoir, Peninsular India abstract: The devastating May 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (Mw 7.9) resulted from thrust of the Tibet Plateau on the Longmen Shan fault zone, a consequence of the Indo-Asian continental collision. Many have speculated on the role played by the Zipingpu Reservoir, impounded in 2005 near the epicenter, in triggering the earthquake. This study evaluates the stress changes in response to the impoundment of the Zipingpu Reservoir and assesses their impact on the Wenchuan earthquake. We show that the impoundment could have changed the Coulomb stress by −0.01 to 0.05 MPa at locations and depth consistent with reported hypocenter positions. This level of stress change has been shown to be significant in triggering earthquakes on critically stressed faults. Because the loading rate on the Longmen Shan fault is <0.005 MPa/yr, we thus suggest that the Zipingpu Reservoir potentially hastened the occurrence of the Wenchuan earthquake by tens to hundreds of years. date: 2009-10 date_type: published publication: Geophysical Research Letters volume: 36 number: 20 publisher: American Geophysical Union id_number: doi:10.1029/2009GL040349 refereed: TRUE issn: 0094-8276 official_url: http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2009GL040349 access_IS-EPOS: limited owner: Publisher citation: Ge, Shemin and Liu, Mian and Lu, Ning and Godt, Jonathan W. and Luo, Gang (2009) Did the Zipingpu Reservoir trigger the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake? Geophysical Research Letters, 36 (20). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1029/2009GL040349