View article

Studying the influence of hydrological cycles on crustal stress changes and seismicity is crucial to disentangling the complex interplay between water-related processes and earthquakes. This study utilizes GNSS data to estimate annual vertical displacements and horizontal strain in response to seasonal water storage changes in Taiwan. The largest GNSS-inferred annual water-thickness change of 0.91 m occurs in SW Taiwan, where the region exhibits contraction and extension along a WNW-ESE trend in wet and dry months, respectively. The orientations of seasonally-varying strain axes are generally subparallel to the tectonic maximum principal stress axes. To assess the statistical correlation between hydrologically-induced stress changes and the timing of earthquake, we calculate the rate of excess earthquakes with respect to background seismicity for discrete stress intervals. We find a 20% increase in …