Relationship between gravity variation and seismic hazards in the western China

In this paper, based on the regional gravity field variation derived from the mobile gravity observed data in the western China, we have got the six sorts of gravity variations at each space-fixed cell by means of the potential field transform. On the basis of the six types of variations, taking the three-issue gravity data in the years 2002, 2005, 2008 as study objects, we computed and analyzed the relationships between the M_S≥6.0 earthquake and the gravity variation with the derived parameters, so that we could try to establish the index system for the purpose of the earthquake forecast. Our study results show that there is no significant relationship between the gravity variation and epicentral location before earthquakes. However, the amplitude of analytic signal and vertical gradient of gravity variation are related to the location of earthquakes happened in future, which can be used for the prediction of the earthquake location as earthquake precursory anomalies.