Analysis of Crustal Deformation on the Korea Peninsula after the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake

Abstract

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) announced that an earthquake of 9.0 magnitude had occurred near the east coast of Japan on March 11, 2011, resulting in a displacement of the crust of about 2.4 meters. The Korean peninsula is located on the Eurasian tectonic plate that stretches out to Japan; therefore, there is a high possibility of being affected by an earthquake. The Korean GPS CORS network operated by the National Geographic Information Institute (NGII) was processed for ten days before and after the earthquake. Both static and kinematic baseline processing were tested for the determination of crustal deformation. The static baseline processing was performed in two scenarios: 1) fixing three IGS stations in China, Mongolia and Russia; 2) fixing SUWN, one of the CORS networks in Korea, in order to effectively verify crustal deformation. All data processing was carried out using Bernese V5.0. The test results show that most of the parts of the Korean peninsula have moved to the east, ranging 1.2 to 5.6 cm, compared to the final solution of the day before the earthquake. The stations, such as DOKD and ULLE that are established on the islands closer to the epicenter, have clearly moved the largest amounts. Furthermore, the station CHJU, located on the southwestern part of Korea, presents relatively small changes. The relative positioning between CORS confirms the fact that there were internal distortions of the Korean peninsula to some extent. In addition, the 30-second interval kinematic processing of CORS data gives an indication of earthquake signals with some delays depending on the distance from the epicenter.