The regional moment tensor of the 5 May 2014 Chiang Rai earthquake (Mw = 6.5), Northern Thailand, with its aftershocks and its implication to the stress and the instability of the Phayao Fault Zone

Abstract On 5 May 2014, the largest earthquake in Thailand modern history occurred in Northern Thailand with over a thousand aftershocks. Most of the epicenters are located within the transition area of the Mae Lao segment (north) and Pan segment (central) of the Phayao Fault Zone (PFZ). Good quality data from all events (ML > 4) are only available for the seismic stations closer to the epicenters ( Tingay et al. (2010) . Based on the Mohr’s diagram of fault plane solutions, we provide geophysical evidence which reveals that the high shear stress Mae Lao segment is likely to slip first producing the main shock on 5 May 2014. The energy transfer between the segments has then led to many aftershocks with mixed mechanisms. At the end, we re-visited the analysis of the former largest earthquake in Northern Thailand in the past decades, the 11 September 1994 event. Its focal mechanism was re-calculated based on the available P-wave polarities. The strike – slip motion should be the mechanism of the earthquake, not the normal motion as originally believed.