Guadalupe Island, Mexico as a new constraint for Pacific plate motion

[1] We use GPS data collected on Isla de Guadalupe and in northern Baja California, Mexico, to estimate site velocities relative to Pacific plate motion. The velocities of all three geodetic monuments on Guadalupe fit a rigid Pacific plate model with residuals of 1 mm/yr. Using the Guadalupe data and data from five IGS stations on the Pacific plate (CHAT, KOKB, KWJ1, MKEA, and THTI) we estimate an angular velocity for this plate that is consistent with other recently-published estimates. Our results indicate that Isla de Guadalupe lies on the Pacific plate, and that GPS data collection on the island usefully constrains Pacific plate motion and rigidity.

[1]  C. G. Engel,et al.  Composition of Basalt Cored in Mohole Project , 1961 .

[2]  W. J. Morgan,et al.  Rises, trenches, great faults, and crustal blocks , 1968 .

[3]  B. Luyendyk,et al.  Sea Beam survey of an active strike‐slip fault: The San Clemente fault in the California Continental Borderland , 1989 .

[4]  B. Simoneit,et al.  The gulf and peninsular province of the Californias , 1991 .

[5]  S. Williams.  The effect of coloured noise on the uncertainties of rates estimated from geodetic time series , 2003 .

[6]  T. Dixon,et al.  New kinematic models for Pacific‐North America Motion from 3 Ma to Present, II: Evidence for a “Baja California Shear Zone” , 2000 .

[7]  P. Shearer,et al.  Earthquake Locations in the Inner Continental Borderland, Offshore Southern California , 2000 .

[8]  W. Normark,et al.  Tosco-Abreojos fault zone: A Neogene transform plate boundary within the Pacific margin of southern Baja California, Mexico , 1979 .

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

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

[11]  D. C. Krause.  Geology of the sea floor east of Guadalupe Island , 1961 .

[12]  R. Nikolaidis.  Observation of geodetic and seismic deformation with the Global Positioning System , 2002 .

[13]  William Rodi,et al.  Global Positioning System constraints on fault slip rates in southern California and northern Baja, Mexico , 1996 .

[14]  C. M. Budwine,et al.  Institute of geophysics and planetary physics , 1991 .

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

[16]  T. Atwater.  Implications of Plate Tectonics for the Cenozoic Tectonic Evolution of Western North America , 1970 .