China has started construction of a monitoring network in seismically active regions in an effort to explore earthquake prediction, researchers said Monday.

Photo taken on March 25, 2017 shows the scene at the accident site in Tumd Right Banner of Baotou city, North China's Inner mongolia autonomous region.[Photo: Xinhua]

According to the plan, 2,000 monitoring stations will be built in two years in Sichuan and Yunnan, two quake-prone provinces in southwest China, said scientists with the Institute of Care-life, a disaster-reduction lab based in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan.

Sensors installed at monitoring stations will collect data on underground stress and energy 8 to 20 kilometers below the surface of the earth, providing researchers with potential insights into earthquake forecasting, said Wang Tun, director of the institute.

Following the construction of the network, researchers will continue to monitor the region for three years and expect to collect data on about 10 earthquakes in this period, based on the past frequency of earthquakes in the region.

The objective of the project is to successfully predict earthquakes whose epicenters are less than 20 kilometers deep, researchers said.

The first monitoring station was established two days ago in Wenchuan county in Sichuan, the epicenter of a devastating earthquake a decade ago.