Investigation of the Crustal Deformation in Iran Using Permanent GPS Station Time Series and Application of Noise Analysis

Today, one of the main objectives of the geodesy is to identify the changes over time at the surface of the earth. It is critical to the design of the infrastructures to know these changes and to be able to predict their trends with time, as any ignorance could lead to incompensable losses to the society. One way to investigate and measure the changes is to establish permanent GPS stations and to process the time series data from the stations. The amplitude and mode of the periodic movements and the parameters of the linear movements can be investigated by the application of the maximum likelihood of the type and amplitude of the noises in the time series. The noise analysis in time series allows the real changes recorded in any stations in the geodynamic network to be accurately measured. With the application of the measured parameters in the deformation equations, the changes in the crust of the earth can be appropriately interpreted. This research shows that the white and flicker noises in vertical components are more than those in the horizontal components. Without the application of noise analysis on time series, the estimated errors for the rate of changes in the geodynamic stations would be underestimated by 8 times.