Abstract
We present an improved clustering approach for grouping regional GPS stations with similar annual signals into four similarity levels. A newly introduced criterion, the annual phase difference among stations, reinforces the clustering process and resolves the discrepancy among the annual signals of stations classified into several clusters. Comparisons show that the improved method enhances the accuracy and representativeness of the land surface deformation features derived from the mean annual signals of clustered stations. With respect to CMONOC stations throughout mainland China, the observed GPS coordinate time series are probably more reliable for acquiring real land surface deformations when employing the 25 regional clusters derived from the improved approach in comparison with some modeled surface loading models (SLMs), which potentially contain mistakes. Based on the results of the improved technique, descriptions of the annual land surface deformation throughout China are given to illustrate the characteristics of the annual signals of GPS station motions in different regions. For the annual signals of the 25 clusters discussed, those of 10 clusters show obvious sinusoidal shapes, including 7 clusters in Southwest China. The peaks and troughs of these annual motion signals happen during different times of a year for northern and southern station signals. In applications to land surface deformation, the improved method can play a preliminary but significant role in searching for the most stable stations before comparing the results of GPS with other geodetic techniques, such as the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and SLMs.
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Data availability
The GPS datasets employed in this manuscript was acquired from the China Earthquake Administration (CEA, ftp://ftp.cgps.ac.cn/products/position/gamit/). If this site is not working, the data will be available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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Acknowledgements
The GPS height time series of CMONOC stations are from the China Earthquake Administration (CEA, ftp://ftp.cgps.ac.cn/products/position/gamit/). We apply the software Hector (http://segal.ubi.pt/hector/) to compute and analyze GPS coordinate time series. The Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC) has provided the first author a scholarship which allows him to visit the University of Nottingham in the UK for 1 year from September 2019. This work is supported by the 2018 Joint R&D and Demonstration Project of the Strategic International Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Key Project (Project No. 2018YFE0206500). In addition, figures in this paper are displayed using GMT and MATLAB. We express our sincere gratitude to these organizations and software providers.
Funding
This work was supported by Chinese Government Scholarship (Grant No. 201906270213).
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Wu, S., Nie, G., Meng, X. et al. Application of an annual phase-augmented clustering approach to annual detection of vertical GPS station deformation. GPS Solut 25, 7 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-020-01042-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10291-020-01042-6