Earth strain observations in the western Great Basin

Abstract

Strains of tidal origin and long-period tectonic origin observed at two sites in central Nevada are discussed and compared with strain observations in other areas of the western United States. The solid earth tides are the periodic deformation of the solid earth, resulting principally from the gravitational attraction of the Sun and Moon. Since the driving force function for the solid earth tides can be calculated quite accurately, the discrepancies between the observed and predicted tides contain important information concerning earth structure.