Eric Calais, Professor, Department Head, Ecole Normale Supérieure, IUF Senior Fellow,
Department of Geosciences. UMR CNRS 8538 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris cedex 05, France.

Saturday march 30th, 2019. 9 am - 4 pm

Course description, objectives:

This course will describe the key features of the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and explain why, how, and under which conditions sub-centimeter positioning is possible, with the goal of interpreting the kinematics of actively deforming regions. We will discuss GNSS orbits and signals, reference frames, and the various strategies to convert ranging data (“GNSS observables”) into positions. We will use the Caribbean context to discuss time series of site positions, in particular at continuously recording GNSS stations, from which site velocities and noise characteristics can be extracted. We will then discuss how the resulting velocities can be used for the kinematic interpretation of regional tectonics and for the study of the earthquake cycle.

Prerequisites recommended: a background in geophysics and tectonics as the MSc level, a basic understanding of the physics of electromagnetic waves, some background in linear algebra.

Supplementary material:

Suggested reading: http://www.geologie.ens.fr/~ecalais/teaching/gps-geodesy/

Some fundamental papers on the basics of GPS:

• Hager, B.H., R.W. King, M.H. Murray, Measurement of crustal deformation using the Global Positioning System, Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Sciences, 19, 351-382, 1991.
• Dixon, T., The Global Positioning System, Review of Geophysics, 1991.
• Segall, P. and J.L. Davis, GPS applications for geodynamics and earthquake studies, Annual Reviews of Earth and Planetary Science, 25, 301-336, 1997.
• Beutler, G., Satellite Navigation Systems for Earth and Space Sciences.
• Bock, Y., and D. Melgar, Physical applications of GPS geodesy: a review, Rep. Prog. Phys. 79, 2016.

Books:

• GPS, Theory and Practice, B. Hofmann-Wellenhof et al., Springer-Verlag.
• GPS Satellite Surveying, A. Leick, John Wiley and Sons.
• Linear Algebra, Geodesy, and GPS, G. Strang and K. Borre, Wellesley-Cambridge Press.
• Understanding GPS, Principles and applications,Kaplan, Artech House Publishers.
• GPS for Geodesy, Kleusberg and Teunissen (Eds), Springer, 1996.
• A guide to GPS positioning, Wells and coll., Canadian GPS Associates, Univ.New Brunswick, 1996.