Imprint of the North American plate in Siberia revealed by GPS

[1] GPS observations in east Siberia combined with global observations, collected 1995–2002, place constraints on the geometry and motions of the Eurasian, North American, and Pacific plates in east Asia. By comparing velocities relative to Eurasia and to North America, we conclude that east Siberia to the east of the Cherskiy Range belongs to the North American plate, hypothesized for three decades but not proven because of uncertainties with the plate boundary arising from the ambiguous seismicity. Smaller plates in east Asia, such as Okhotsk and Amurian, can neither be resolved nor excluded by the GPS velocities.

[1]  Jing-nan Liu,et al.  Present-Day Crustal Deformation in China Constrained by Global Positioning System Measurements , 2001, Science.

[2]  É. Calais,et al.  Are post-seismic effects of the M= 8.4 Bolnay earthquake (1905 July 23) still influencing GPS velocities in the Mongolia-Baikal area? , 2002 .

[3]  Robert W. King,et al.  Global Positioning System measurements from eastern Tibet and their implications for India/Eurasia intercontinental deformation , 2000 .

[4]  The 2000 Mw 6.8 Uglegorsk earthquake and regional plate boundary deformation of Sakhalin from geodetic data , 2003 .

[5]  Zuheir Altamimi,et al.  ITRF2000: A new release of the International Terrestrial Reference Frame for earth science applications , 2002 .

[6]  K. Fujita,et al.  Extrusion tectonics of the Okhotsk Plate, northeast Asia , 1993 .

[7]  Michael Bevis,et al.  Motion and rigidity of the Pacific Plate and implications for plate boundary deformation , 2002 .

[8]  L. Zonenshain,et al.  Geodynamics of the Baikal rift zone and plate tectonics of Asia , 1981 .

[9]  N. F. Vasilenko,et al.  The Amurian Plate motion and current plate kinematics in eastern Asia , 1999 .

[10]  Walter H. F. Smith,et al.  New, improved version of generic mapping tools released , 1998 .

[11]  O. Kamigaichi,et al.  Initial results from WING, the continuous GPS network in the western Pacific area , 1998 .

[12]  S. Solomon,et al.  North American‐Eurasian Plate Boundary in northeast Asia , 1976 .

[13]  C. Demets.  A test of present-day plate geometries for northeast Asia and Japan , 1992 .

[14]  Timothy H. Dixon,et al.  REVEL: A model for Recent plate velocities from space geodesy , 2002 .

[15]  S. Stein,et al.  Can the Okhotsk Plate be discriminated from the North American plate , 1996 .

[16]  W. Prescott,et al.  Crustal deformation rates in central and eastern U.S. inferred from GPS , 2001 .

[17]  Richard G. Gordon,et al.  Effect of recent revisions to the geomagnetic reversal time scale on estimates of current plate motions , 1994 .

[18]  Arthur L. Lerner-Lam,et al.  Geodetic constraints on the rigidity and relative motion of Eurasia and North America , 2000 .

[19]  Robert W. King,et al.  Estimating regional deformation from a combination of space and terrestrial geodetic data , 1998 .