Monitoring of Earth's Crust Movements Associated to Earthquakes through GPS Observations in the Gulf of California

Abstract

The distribution of the velocities of the Pacific and North American plates and their possible alteration by earthquakes has been studied using the GPS continuous measurements in the lapse from 2010 to 2016. The GPS data were processed with GAMIT/GLOBK to estimate the position and velocity of the continuous stations. Subsequent analysis has shown that the average relative movement between the Pacific and North American plates is consistent with previous studies, estimating 7.33 mm/year for the north component, and -9.50 mm/year for the east component with an absolute value of 500 mm/yr. A possible relationship between sudden changes in velocity associated with coseismic events and a trend indicates that the probability of having an earthquake of magnitude Mw ≥ 5.0 increases with an increase of the relative velocity between plates is presented.