Seismogenic fault and aftershock characteristics for the 2014 M_S7.3 Yutian earthquake，Xinjiang

Using synthetic aperture radar （SAR for short） data collected by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1 satellites during the period from October 2014 to September 2019, the postseismic deformation following the M_S7.3 earthquake in Yutian, Xinjiang on 12 February 2014 was analyzed. The result showed that this earthquake induced obvious postseismic deformation along the southern Xorkol fault. It is for the first time that the seismogenic fault is confirmed to be one northeast-striking left-laterally strike-slip fault in the seismic deformation view, instead of another north-south-trending fault as proposed by a few studies. The InSAR （interferometric SAR） mean velocity map shows that there are only small postseismic slips and the fault is still strongly locked in the west of the main shock, which indicates that the risk of strong earthquake is high in the gap between the 2008 and 2014 Yutian M_S7.3 earthquakes. However, in the east of the 2014 main shock, both the southern Xorkol fault and Ashikule-Xorkol fault are creeping with few aftershock activities, suggesting a lower level risk of strong earthquake for this region in the near future.