Rio Grande Rift GPS Measurements 2006-2009

We use three years of measurements from 25 continuous GPS stations across the Rio Grande Rift in New Mexico and Colorado to estimate surface velocities, time series, baselines, and strain rates. The stations are part of the EarthScope Rio Grande Rift experiment, a collaboration between researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the University of New Mexico, and Utah State University. The network includes 5 east-west station profiles transecting the rift, with the southernmost line in southern New Mexico and the northernmost line in northern Colorado. Most of the stations have shallow-drilled braced monuments installed in 2006-2007 and will remain occupied until 2010-2011 or longer. We also estimate station coordinates and velocities from the 2001 and 2008 High Accuracy Reference Network (HARN) campaigns conducted in Colorado. Initial 72-hour observations were made in the summer of 2001 and were repeated in the summer of 2008. Data from regional Plate Boundary Observatory (PBO) GPS stations are included in the processing to increase station density and extend profiles further to the east and west of the Rio Grande Rift. We use GAMIT/GLOBK to process regional sub-networks that share several common sites well determined in the Stable North America Reference Frame (SNARF). These common sites are used as a tie between the sub-networks and SNARF. Our time series from the first three years of the experiment show excellent monument stability. We have solved for baseline distance as a function of time across each of these lines. Despite what might be expected for a rigid Colorado Plateau moving away from rigid North America about a pole near Colorado, we find no evidence of an increase in Rio Grande Rift opening to the south. Our results suggest that steady-state extension across the rift from northern Colorado to southern New Mexico has an upper bound less than ~1 mm/yr with strain rates less than ~20 nanostrain/yr, although these results are still preliminary. Station velocities will be further examined to quantify the rotation of the Colorado Plateau relative to the High Plains and investigate whether a propagating crack tip model is appropriate for the northern extent of the rift in Colorado.