Present-Day 3D Crustal Deformation of the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau From Space Geodesy

High-resolution present-day earth surface deformation maps from satellites provide important data constraints, which help us better understand tectonic processes and analyze seismic hazards. Here, we use Sentinel-1 Radar images (2014-2020) and accurate positioning measurements (2009-2019) to get a high-resolution three-dimensional earth surface velocity map for the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, and we invert the slip rate and coupling ratio of major regional faults. We find similar to 4 mm/yr uplift along an arc from the Qilianshan to Lajishan, relative to the neighboring low-elevation area to the east, which indicates ongoing rapid orogeny. We find transient deformation along the Laohushan and 1920 M8.5 Haiyuan rupture segments of the Haiyuan fault, whereas the western Haiyuan, southern Liupanshan, central Lajishan and central-western West Qinling faults are essentially locked above 15-20 km, suggesting a potentially high seismic hazard. The northeast Tibetan Plateau, which is impeded by the tectonically stable Ordos block, continues to grow in response to the far-field India-Eurasia collision. This region has several large-scale active faults that hosted some destructive earthquakes in the last 100 years. Although intensively studied, the fault kinematics of those seismogenic faults are still not clear, mainly because of poor observational constraints. Hence, high-resolution present-day deformation maps are essential to answering this question, either of scientific or societal concern. We provide satellite-based ground deformation rate maps with mm-accuracy for this region. They show shallow fault creep along some segments of the Haiyuan fault which is better constrained than previous results, active tectonic uplift in the Lajishan. Our work gives new constraints for the seismic hazard for the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau case. We derive a new high-resolution three-dimensional present-day deformation map for the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau Geodetic data reveals ongoing rapid uplift along an accurate orogenic belt from the eastern Qilianshan and Lajishan New constraints for the seismic hazard analysis for the Northeastern Tibetan Plateau