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Present-Day Crustal Vertical Motion Around the Ordos Block Constrained by Precise Leveling and GPS Data

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Abstract

Precise leveling data observed in the period of 1970–2014 around the Ordos block were collected and processed to estimate present-day crustal vertical movement. Vertical rates of 6 GPS sites were employed as a priori constraints to define the reference frame. The velocity field shows that the interior of the Ordos block moves upward at a rate of 3 mm/a as a stable block. With respect to the central Ordos, the grabens and rifts around the Ordos block are undergoing subsidence, while the northeastern and southwestern Ordos uplift at the average rates of 2 and 1 mm/a, respectively. To the southeastern margin of the Ordos block, the Weihe and southern Shanxi grabens are subsiding at the rates of 4–6 mm/a. The subsidence of the Shanxi graben indicates that the graben is experiencing extensional movement on a long timescale. To the northwestern margin of the Ordos block, the Hetao and Yinchuan rifts are subsiding at the rates of 2–3 mm/a. A 2-D buried faulting model is used to infer the normal or reverse dip-slip rates. Our solution shows that most of the normal slip rates along the faults in the grabens and rifts are ~2 mm/a.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the National Administration of Surveying, Mapping and Geoinformation and the First Crust Monitoring and Application Center, China Earthquake Administration, for use of their data. We thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the manuscript. Discussions with Jeffrey Freymueller also helped this study. This work was supported by the National Special Fund for Earthquake Scientific Research in Public Interest (2015419009, 201208009) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41174083).

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Correspondence to Ming Hao.

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Hao, M., Wang, Q., Cui, D. et al. Present-Day Crustal Vertical Motion Around the Ordos Block Constrained by Precise Leveling and GPS Data. Surv Geophys 37, 923–936 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10712-016-9375-1

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