ASSESSMENT OF POTENTIAL TSUNAMI GENERATION IN CHINA'S BOHAI SEA FROM DIRECT GEOTECTONIC AND COLLATERAL SOURCE MECHANISMS

ASSESSMENT OF POTENTIAL TSUNAMI GENERATION IN CHINA'S BOHAI SEA FROM DIRECT GEOTECTONIC AND COLLATERAL SOURCE MECHANISMS George Pararas Carayannis Tsunami Society Honolulu, Hawaii 96815, USA. Email: ABSTRACT The Bohai Sea borders northeastern China's most populous and highest economic value coastal areas where several megacities are located. Critical infrastructure facilities exist or are under construction, including a nuclear power plant and super port facilities. Large reserves of oil have been discovered and a number of offshore oil platforms have been built. The extent of development along coastal areas requires a better assessment of potential tsunami risks. Although tsunamis do not pose as much of a threat as earthquakes in this region, locally destructive tsunamis have been generated in the past and future events could have significant impacts on coastal populations and China's economy, particularly because most of the development has taken place in low-lying regions, including river deltas. The present study examines the geotectonics of the Bohai basin region, the impact of past historical events, and the potential for local tsunami generation from a variety of direct and collateral source mechanisms triggered by intra plate earthquakes. More specifically, the present study examines: a)major active faults bounding the Bohai Basin; b) the resulting crustal deformation patterns of tectonic structures that have resulted in catastrophic earthquakes in recent years; c) the basin-wide extension - with local inversion - extending into the Bohai Sea that generated tsunamigenic earthquakes in 1888 and 1969; and d) deformational future seismic events with the potential to generate local tsunamis directly or by collateral mechanisms of folding, en-echelon bookshelf failures, or from destabilization/dissociation of structural accumulations of gas hydrate deposits within the basin's thick sedimentary stratigraphic layers. Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol. 28, No. 1, page 35 (2009) 1. INTRODUCTION The Bohai Sea (also referred to as the Bohai Gulf or Bay, or just the Bo Hai) is a semienclosed coastal, shallow sea on the northeastern coast of China. The gulf is formed by the Liaodong Peninsula to the northeast and the Shandong Peninsula to the south (Fig. 1). It has a mean depth of about 20 m and a maximum depth of about 70 m near the northern coast of the Bohai Strait where it connects with the Yellow Sea (Fig. 2). Bo Hai consists of three bays: Laizhou Bay to the south, Liaodong Bay to the north, and Bohai Bay to the west. Major rivers, the Huang He, the Liao He, and the Hai He empty into Bo Hai. The Bohai Sea borders northeastern China's most populous and highest economic value coastal areas where several megacities are located in developed regions of Shandong, Hebei, Liaoning and Tianjin Province. Dalian, on the the eastern shore of Liaodong Peninsula of Liaoning Province, is an example of such a developing coastal megacity. Figure 1. Bohai Sea, NE China. Critical infastructure facilities exist or are under construction throughout the region. Currently, China has nine nuclear generators in commercial operation along its eastern coasts. The first nuclear power plant in the northeast - the Hongyanhe Nuclear Power Plant - is being constructed at the Donggang Town of Wafangdian City, in Liaoning. Furthermore, large reserves Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol. 28, No. 1, page 36 (2009) of oil have been discovered and a number of offshore oil platforms have been built or are under construction. The extent of development along the coastal areas of the Bohai Sea requires a better assessment of potential tsunami risks. Although tsunamis do not pose as much of a threat as earthquakes in this region, locally destructive tsunamis could be generated in the future that could have significant impacts on the coastal populations and the economy of China, particularly because most of the development has taken place in low-lying regions, including river deltas. The present study examines the geotectonics of the Bohai Basin region, the impact of past historical events and evaluates the potential for local tsunami generation from a variety of direct and collateral source mechanisms triggered by earthquake, landslides or other collateral occurrences. Fig. 2. Bathymetry of the Bohai Sea 2. SEISMOTECTONIC SETTING OF THE BOHAI BASIN AND SEA. The collision of India with the Asian mainland during the earliest Eocene (~50 Ma) has resulted in the growth of the world's largest orogenic belt - the Himalayas and the associated Tibetan plateau. The seismicity of the entire region is the result of extension caused in part by crustal extrusion of Southeastern Asia (Tapponnier and Molnar, 1977; Peltzer and Tapponnier, 1988; Pararas-Carayannis, 2008d). China's seimotectonic evolution is characterized by the merger of several microcontinents throughout the entire Phanerozoic (Zhang et al., 1984; Hendrix and Davis, 2001; Yin and Nie, 1996). The collision and associated convergence and extension have Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol. 28, No. 1, page 37 (2009) created 64 major tectonic zones in China, which can be subdivided into a smaller number of tectonic "regions" (Davies et al. 2001; Zhang et al.,1984). The seismotectonic setting of eastern China is complex. Most of the large earthquakes in the region are associated with a mechanism of eastward extension that results in shallow crustal mass transfer. The extension process was initiated by early Tethyan Torsion and subsequent Sinian Torsion which continued during the Cenozoic (Fig. 3). Fig. 3. Tethyan Structure of Eastern China and Adjacent Seas Science of Tsunami Hazards, Vol. 28, No. 1, page 38 (2009) The Bohai Basin was formed during the Late Quaternary to the east of the Cenozoic rift basin of North China and underwent compound and complex tectonic events during its formation and development (Ye, et al., 1985; Hellinger et al, 1985). The Basin is an apparent collage of island arcs and possible microcontinental blocks on the Mongolian accretionary fold belt and has a complex seismotectonic setting (Davis et al., 2001). It covers an area of about 200,000 km2. Two different deformational mechanisms have been proposed for its Cenozoic formation (Castellanos & Mann, 2005). The first mechanism postulates a two-stage extension consisting of Paleogene rifting in a WNW-ESE direction followed by Neogene thermal subsidence. The two-stage rifting mechanism is attributed to the combined rollback of the subducted Pacific plate beneath the Asian continent, lithospheric extension of the overriding continental plate, and to thermally-driven, regional subsidence (Ye et al., 1985). The second postulated mechanism pertains to a more localized Cenozoic pull-apart basin - formed at a right-step in a right-lateral shear system parallel to the Asian continental margin (Allen et al., 1997). Either of the postulated evolutionary mechanisms of pull-apart rifting or subdu (...truncated)