Three Dimensional Plate Kinematics in Romania

Since 1996 the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) 461``Strong Earthquakes: A Challenge for Geosciences andCivil Engineering' is funded by the DeutscheForschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) asa German contribution to the UN initiative``International Decade of Disaster Reduction' (IDNDR).A central project of this CRC is the subproject B1``Three Dimensional Plate Kinematics in Romania', whichis installed to detect borders of the geotectonicplates in Romania, to quantify their three-dimensionalmovement rates and to determine in detail thedeformation of each geotectonic unit in the VranceaRegion as a contribution to the research of thetectonic cause of the intermediate depth earthquakesin this region. These aims shall be accomplished byrepeated GPS-measurements in a network which has beeninstalled in 1997 and measured until now in 1997 and1998. This network is consisting of 26 stations,covering an area of 250 km × 380 km with the Vranceaarea as the centre. The geodetic frame is given by sixstations of the CEGRN (Central European GeodynamicRegional Network) of the CEI-initiative CERGOP, forwhich coordinates and velocities in a global tectonicscenario are available. The paper gives informationabout the tectonic background, the geodetic network,the GPS-measurements and the achieved accuracies andfirst results of deformation analyses. It is shownthat until now no significant deformations could bedetected. But the extension of the GPS network andremeasurements with time intervals of two years willallow statements about the recent crustal movementswithin the lifetime of the CRC 461.