Last development in plate kinematics determination in Victoria Land (Antarctica) trough VLNDEF Network in Antarctica using Gamit/Globk software

Abstract

Abstract A semi-permanent GPS network of about 30 vertices: Victoria Land Network for DEFormation control (VLNDEF) has been set up since Austral summer 1998 at Terra Nova Bay (TNB) near Ross Sea in Antarctica. A permanent GPS station TNB1 based on dual frequency Ashtech P-code GPS receiver with a Choke Ring Antenna has been installed on a bedrock monument in October 1998 and has recorded continuously up to the present. The GPS network has been routinely surveyed every two summers using high quality dual frequency GPS receivers; data, metadata and solutions are available to the scientific community at (http://www.geodant.unimore.it). In this paper we present the results of a distributed session approach applied to processing GPS data of the VLNDEF network, and based on Gamit/Globk 10.3 GPS analysis software. An improved reference frame definition was implemented using Globk package in order to compute Antarctic intra-plate residual velocities and to invert the strain field from GPS data in this region.