LAUSR

Abstract On October 17th, 2016, a M s6.2 earthquake occurred in Zaduo County of Qinghai Province, China. The aim of this study is to use synthetic aperture radar (SAR) technology aboard the Sentinel-1A satellite to obtain high-resolution co-seismic surface displacement data and then to confirm the geometric parameters of the fault and slip distribution model. To this end, linear and non-linear inversion algorithms based on an elastic half-space dislocation model were used. The results showed that a distributed slip model can explain the surface deformation field measured by InSAR very well. The surface deformation field caused by the earthquake was an oval-shaped region of subsidence with a maximum displacement of 5 cm along the line of sight of the radar waves. This earthquake was mainly the result of a normal-slip fault process with 72°N strike and 65° dip. The slip was mainly concentrated at depths of 9–15 km. The maximum slip was 0.17 m, located at a depth of 12 km. The moment magnitude given by inversion was M w5.9. This was basically in agreement with the moment magnitudes and surface magnitudes measured by USGS and CENC.