Intra-continental dip-slip earthquakes often occur in the orogen and rift zones with complex tectonics, providing rare opportunities to illuminate the deformation and evolution of continental structures. However, due to the sparse seismological and geodetic observations, such earthquakes are less studied. Here, we report the fault geometries of two dip-slip earthquakes recently occurred in Southern Tian Shan and the Mongolia-Baikal rift zone revealed by InSAR . The 2020 Mw6.0 Jiashi earthquake occurred in the Keping-tage fold-and-thrust belt in southwest Tian Shan. This region is seismically active, yet most well-recorded earthquakes occurred south of the mountain front. The lack of large earthquakes beneath the belt thus hinders our understanding of the orogenic process to the north. Combining InSAR measurements and relocated aftershocks, we found that a fault model involving a shallow thrust fault and two deeper faults can best reconcile the surface deformation and aftershock distribution. Stress analysis suggests that slips on the shallow fault reactivated the older basement structures at depth. Our results reflect the basement-involved shortening activated by a thin-skinned thrust faulting event with surface deformation, implying a southward orogenic process of the southwest Tian Shan. The 2021 Mw6.7 Lake Hövsgöl earthquake occurred in the Mongolia-Baikal rift zone (MBRZ), which is located in the northern tip of the northern Mongolia, and is bounded by the Tibet Plateau orogenic belt and the Siberian Platform. Using the Bayesian inversion method we derived a fault plane with two slip patches, one is mainly strike slip and the other is mainly normal slip component. The correlation between the observed and predicted displacements by the single fault model is 97.46%. Coulomb stress analysis shows that the 2021 event has a triggering effect on the western segment of the Tunka Fault to the north, where no large earthquakes have occurred since the 1905 M8+ earthquake, raising the potential for seismic risk in this region.

We reveal a slip-partitioning rupture on the North Hovsgol Fault during the 2021 Mw6.7 Lake Hovsgol, Mongolia earthquake. Left-lateral motions on the Mondy Fault north of the epicenter likely controlled the observed slip partitioning pattern. The earthquake highlights the non-negligible role of the bounding strike-slip fault in the formation and evolution of oblique rift.

The Keping-tage fold-thrust belt in southwest Tian Shan is seismically active, yet most well-recorded earthquakes occurred south of the mountain front, hindering our understanding of the orogenic process to the north. The 2020 Mw6.0 Jiashi earthquake is an important event with surface deformation in the nappe structure well illuminated by InSAR. Here, we employ the surface deformation and relocated aftershocks to investigate the fault slip distribution associated to this event. Further added by an analysis of Coulomb stress changes, we derive a fault model involving slips on a shallow low-angle (~10º) north-dipping thrust fault as well as on a left-lateral tear fault and a high-angle south-dipping reverse fault in mid crust. Our results reflect the basement-involved shorterning activated by a thin-skinned thrust faulting event with the surface deformation implying the basin-ward orogenic process of the southwest Tian Shan.