Contemporary crustal motion and deformation of South America plate

This paper presents the contemporary motion and active deformation of South America plate and relative motion of Nazca-South America plate using space geodetic data. The South America plate is moving at average 14.5 mm/a with an azimuth of 15.2° and shrinking in the west-east at 10.9 mm/a. The geodetic deformations of sites with respect to the South America plate are in quite good agreement with the estimated deformations from NNR-NUVEL1A, but the deformation of the western South America regions is very large. Project supported by the National Important Basic Research Project (No. G. 1998040703), and Open Research Fund Program of the Key Laboratory of Geospace Environment and Geodesy, Ministry of Education, China (No. 030405).