Abstract: Through investigation and systematic study, it has been found that swarm activity carries rich precursory information. Main results are as follows: ① One and a half to three years before strong earthquakes, swarm activity obviously increases in the whole seismic zone or some segment including future strong earthquake epicenter; ② Around the future epicenter, the number of swarm is the greatest and the swarm most concentrated, the swarm ring surrounds the future main shock, forming swarm gap of eliptical configuration with maximum scale about 200 km; ③ The number of swarms increases with the future earthquake magnitude; ④ Several months before some strongearthquakes, the swarm increasing rate tends to accelerate with gap filling, this can be referred as index of short-term stage for M7 earthquakes; ⑤ Based upon the above results, sucessful short-term prediction has been made for the Oct.5, 2008 Wuqia M6.8 earthquake, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Key words: Tianshan Area, Temporo-spatial swarm activity, Earthquake prediction