Authors

Huiyu Yang

Type

Text

Type

Thesis

Advisor

Rasbury, Troy | Holt, William E | Hemming, Gary.

Date

2014-12-01

Keywords

Geophysics

Department

Department of Geosciences.

Language

en_US

Source

This work is sponsored by the Stony Brook University Graduate School in compliance with the requirements for completion of degree.

Identifier

http://hdl.handle.net/11401/77672

Publisher

The Graduate School, Stony Brook University: Stony Brook, NY.

Format

application/pdf

Abstract

The Great Basin of the western United States is one of the research hotspots in recent years because of its mysterious and complicated geologic and geophysical characteristics. There are several hypotheses that describe the active deformation and its association with lithospheric structure and mantle processes. The EarthScope program provides a large data set of geodetic information for understanding the active deformation processes there. In this thesis, using geodetic data provided by PBO program (which is an important part of EarthScope program), I analyzed continuous GPS time series to investigate possible transient deformation behavior within the Great Basin region. I analyzed time series between the time period of 2004.20 to 2011.20. Using this data, I generated time-dependent displacement and strain solutions for the whole region in 0.1 year time steps. Small, but spatially correlated, anomalous transient movements of ~2mm are observed over several time periods. Several hypotheses can be applied to explain the behavior of the GPS stations, including possible movement along an active megadetachment [Wernicke et al. | 2008], coupling with mantle flow driven by a lithospheric drip [West et al. | 2009], or toroidal mantle flow through the western U.S. slab window [Zandt et al. | 2008], and even the influence of variable hydrologic loading [G. Heki, 2013]. | 35 pages

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