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Crustal loading near Great Salt Lake, Utah
Author(s) -
Elósegui P.,
Davis J. L.,
Mitrovica J. X.,
Bennett R. A.,
Wernicke B. P.
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
geophysical research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.007
H-Index - 273
eISSN - 1944-8007
pISSN - 0094-8276
DOI - 10.1029/2002gl016579
Subject(s) - amplitude , salt lake , geology , global positioning system , precipitation , elevation (ballistics) , geodesy , climatology , meteorology , geomorphology , geometry , geography , telecommunications , physics , mathematics , quantum mechanics , structural basin , computer science
Two sites of the BARGEN GPS network are located ∼30 km south of Great Salt Lake (GSL). Lake‐level records since mid‐1996 indicate seasonal water elevation variations of ∼0.3 m amplitude superimposed on a roughly “decadal” feature of amplitude ∼0.6 m. Using an elastic Green's function and a simplified load geometry for GSL, we calculate that these variations translate into radial crustal loading signals of ±0.5 mm (seasonal) and ±1 mm (decadal). The horizontal loading signals are a factor of ∼2 smaller. Despite the small size of the expected loading signals, we conclude that we can observe them using GPS time series for the coordinates of these two sites. The observed amplitudes of the variations agree with the predicted decadal variations to <0.5 mm. The observed annual variations, however, disagree; this difference may be caused by some combination of local precipitation‐induced site motion, unmodeled loading from other nearby sources, errors in the GSL model, and atmospheric errors.