Measuring Crustal Deformation in Europe by High Precision Geodetic VLBI

Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy

Scientific paper

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Geodetic Vlbi, Crustal Motion, Geodynamics, Tectonics

Scientific paper

At the western tip of the Eurasian plate, the European continent is besieged by thrusting and receding neighbour plates causing deformations and ruptures of the Earth's crust evidenced by earthquakes and volcanic outbursts. Measuring the extent and progress of crustal deformation has become one of the primary tasks of geodesists and geophysicists. Realizing that Europe enjoys one of the densest networks of radio telescopes especially equipped for high precision, geodetic VLBI has provided the incentive to organise a campaign of regular geodetic VLBI observations in the European network of fixed radio telescopes. The measurements have been carried out since the late eighties at an average rate of six sessions per year. From these data, site coordinates, baseline length changes and station velocity vectors have been derived with steadily increasing accuracy. The overall picture of the observed present-day site motions emulates quite well the pattern of tectonic motions inferred from the geotectonic setting of central Europe and the western Mediterranean. Interesting details are emerging for horizontal motions of the three stations in Italy, which are strongly affected by the complex interactions between the different tectonic regimes in this area. The accuracy of the vertical components is also improving with increasing length of the observational record, allowing to detect significant trends among the relative vertical motions of the sites.
The geodetic VLBI network operations have received supportive funding by the European Union under the 2nd and 4th Framework Programmes.

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