UA geosciences professor Rick Bennett has been awarded funding from NSF for the project "Collaborative Research: Geodetic Constraints on the Kinematics of the Colorado Plateau and its Western and Southern Margin," which will allow him to deploy over 30 high-precision continuous GPS units to measure crustal strain in the region.
Among an array of projects, Rick's team uses GPS [right] "to detect crustal motions throughout Arizona. Our goal is to determine how the crust is actively deforming. The changes in crustal velocities that we seek to discriminate are very small (< 1 mm/yr) but have important implications for geodynamics and seismic hazards."