This network is providing a definitive determination of strain and strain rates of the network.
Earthquakes are fundamentally related to strain in the earth's crust.
The earthquake cycle is thought to be a repetitive process in which strain energy is slowly stored as deformation that, upon reaching some limiting value, is released by fault rupture and rapid deformation in an earthquake. There are several important problems about the earthquake cycle that can be addressed through CGPS in the central US and New Madrid Area. First is a robust determination of the strain rate in the seismic zone. These problems, especially the second, can most easily be addressed and answered by a combination of CGPS measurements and CGPS support of campaign GPS measurements. An additional benefit of a CGRS monitoring component in the New Madrid seismic zone will be the ability to capture the full, dynamic geodetic signal of a large earthquake in the New Madrid seismic zone.