Tibetan Plateau-Scale Kinematics Revealed in a Single Event: The Mw 7.1 7 January 2025 Tingri Earthquake

The 7 January 2025 Mw 7.1 Tingri earthquake ruptured the southern Xainza–Dinggye rift in the Tibetan Plateau, ∼200 km north of the Himalayan frontal thrust system. This rift lies in a network of discrete normal and strike-slip faults that accommodate gravitational collapse and lateral extrusion of the Plateau with overall India–Eurasia convergence. Subpixel image correlation and coseismically shifted digital elevation model differencing of high-resolution (∼0.5 m) satellite optical imagery reveal the full 3D coseismic displacement field of the earthquake. Rupture occurred on two west-dipping faults: the Lagoi fault in the north, cutting through mountainous terrain at relatively high elevation (∼5500 m) within granitic–gneissic rocks, and the Dingmu Co fault in the south, bounding a lower elevation (∼4200 m) basin within Tethyan metasedimentary rocks. Northern deformation consists of coherent, block-like oblique hanging wall subsidence with left-lateral slip (>2 m). Southern deformation is more distributed, with comparable magnitudes of subsidence and northwestward translation accommodated along a series of hanging wall faults. Footwall rebound is minimal and occurs over shorter distances than observed in the long-term landscape record. Between these domains, a ∼5–10 km wide east–west transition zone absorbs diffuse north–south contraction (∼1 m) and right-lateral motion (∼1.5 m), above a concave-up along-strike curved fault imaged by aftershocks that may direct slip toward its deepest center. Collectively, these observations indicate the control of topographic stresses, lithology, fault geometry, and a weak lower crust in partitioning discrete and diffuse deformation during a single earthquake, reproducing Plateau-wide kinematic patterns typically inferred from geodetic and geomorphic observations over much longer timescales.