Analysis and monitoring modern Earth’s surface deformation velocity for local geodynamic polygons with scale effect

Abstract

For assessing the geodynamic state of areas with different tectonic activity it is necessary to correctly ass the deformations of the Earth’s crust. One of the methods to study the destruction of the Earth’s crust is to make observations using global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). The use of GNSS to observe the current movements of the Earth’s crust makes it possible to collect the most reliable data at different scales (local or regional). The analysis of data on the Earth’s surface deformations allows obtaining fundamental knowledge about the geodynamic regime of the region or local area under study and assessing the engineering state of natural and technical systems. The purpose of this study is to develop and test a method for analyzing the deformation rates of the Earth’s surface, taking into account the scale effect on local geodynamic polygons. The tasks of the work included: creation of a catalogue of deformation velocity data; deformation analysis taking into account their spatial scalability; assessment of the prospects of application of the obtained results. The effect of deformation rates reduction and their derivatives with increasing distance between observation points was investigated. The paper presents the calculation procedure, obtained distributions and regression dependencies of strain rates. Based on the revealed generalized dependencies, it is possible to a priori evaluate the deformation regime on the geodynamic test site (either to specify the degree of tectonic activity or to predict abnormally possible deformations).