A survey of Earth strain tides in Great Britain

Summary . We report 35 measurements of Earth strain tides at 16 near-surface sites in Great Britain. This is the first widespread survey undertaken specifically to examine the problem of the inhomogeneity of elastic strain fields near the Earth's surface. Some sites were instrumented intensively in order to examine variations of tidal admittance over distances of several hundred metres, while measurements from single instruments at other sites were compared with theoretically predicted strain tides. After allowing for cavity and topographic effects, our data show variations of up to 50 per cent in tidal admittance. We interpret such large anomalies as being due to variations in the regional elastic parameters of wavelength about a 100 m or less. The data indicate that strain measurements from single instrument sites must be interpreted with caution.