Eastern China is a seismically active interplate environment for which extensive sets of seismic, structural and geophysical data are available. We propose a multipurpose comparative study of seismicity and neotectonics in eastern China and in the eastern United States with reference also to block rotation in California, primarily directed at problems concerning earthquake hazard and neotectonics in intraplate regions. This project is in collaboration with Ma Zongjin and his group at the Center for Analysis and Prediction, State Seismological Bureau, in Beijing, and has been approved by the State Seismological Bureau. The project involves yearly one-month visits by each of the collaborating groups to the counterpart institutes. The comparative study will involve an extensive exchange of earthquake data, methodologies, results and ideas. We will produce new data on the seismicity of northeastern China by the application of an algorithm to obtain epicenters and magnitudes from intensity data, by the determination of source parameters from waveform modeling of moderate size earthquakes and by mapping Sn propagation characteristics.
