CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The present-day deformation of the earth crust in the Argentine part of Tierra del Fuego main island (southernmost South America) is here investigated based on repeated geodetic GPS observations. Theisland is traversed by the active transform boundary between the South American and Scotia tectonic plates, represented by the Magallanes-Fagnano fault system. Since 1993 a regional network comprising todate 29 GPS sites has been observed almost every year.The complete set of accumulated observations was processed using the Bernese GPS software and state-of-the-art processing strategies and models.The utilisation of homogeneous GPS products resulting from a reprocessing of the global IGS network warrants a stable realisation of a global reference frame. For each GPS site three-dimensional positions and linear velocities with error estimates were obtained. A strain analysis of the horizontal velocity components revealed the zones of major deformation activity. A 30 km-wide deformation belt centred on the main trace of the fault system was identified. This belt is bordered to the north (South America) and south (Scotia) by geodynamically stable zones, which move horizontally with a relative average velocity of 4.4 ± 0.6 (east) and 0.3 ± 0.4 (north) millimetre per year. Withinthe deformation belt a maximum strain rate in the order of 0.25 μstrain per year has been detected. A pronounced change in the deformation style from transtension (east) to transpression (west) is observed. The area of predominating shortening of the crust coincides with a local rotation minimum and relative uplift. Throughout the period covered by the GPS observations the displacements and deformations occurred to be linear with time.