Global positioning system velocities from 553 control points within the Tibetan Plateau and on its margins show that the present-day tectonics in the plateau is best described as deformation of a continuous medium, at least when averaged over distances of .;100 km. Deformation occurs throughout the plateau interior by ESE-WNW extension and slightly slower NNE-SSW shortening. Relative to Eurasia, material within the plateau interior moves roughly eastward with speeds that increase toward the east, and then flows southward around the eastern end of the Himalaya. Crustal thickening on the northeast- ern and eastern margins of the plateau occurs over a zone ;400 km wide and cannot be the result of elastic strain on a single major thrust fault. Shortening there accommodates much of India's penetration into Eurasia. A description in terms of movements of rigid blocks with elastic strain associated with slip on faults between them cannot match the velocity field.

Continuous deformation of the Tibetan Plateau from global positioning system data

Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements in China indicate that crustal shortening accommodates most of India's penetration into Eurasia. Deformation within the Tibetan Plateau and its margins, the Himalaya, the Altyn Tagh, and the Qilian Shan, absorbs more than 90% of the relative motion between the Indian and Eurasian plates. Internal shortening of the Tibetan plateau itself accounts for more than one-third of the total convergence. However, the Tibetan plateau south of the Kunlun and Ganzi-Mani faults is moving eastward relative to both India and Eurasia. This movement is accommodated through rotation of material around the eastern Syntaxis. The North China and South China blocks, east of the Tibetan Plateau, move coherently east-southeastward at rates of 2 to 8 millimeters per year and 6 to 11 millimeters per year, respectively, with respect to the stable Eurasia.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/294/5542/574.full.pdf

Present-Day Crustal Deformation in China Constrained by Global Positioning System Measurements

[1] We present a new global model for Recent plate velocities, REVEL, describing the relative velocities of 19 plates and continental blocks. The model is derived from publicly available space geodetic (primarily GPS) data for the period 1993–2000. We include an independent and rigorous estimate for GPS velocity uncertainties to assess plate rigidity and propagate these uncertainties to the velocity estimates. The velocity fields for North America, Eurasia, and Antarctica clearly show the effects of glacial isostatic adjustment, and Australia appears to depart from rigid plate behavior in a manner consistent with the mapped intraplate stress field. Two thirds of tested plate pairs agree with the NUVEL-1A geologic (3 Myr average) velocities within uncertainties. Three plate pairs (Caribbean–North America, Caribbean–South America, and North America–Pacific) exhibit significant differences between the geodetic and geologic model that may reflect systematic errors in NUVEL-1A due to the use of seafloor magnetic rate data that do not reflect the full plate rate because of tectonic complexities. Most other differences probably reflect real velocity changes over the last few million years. Several plate pairs (Arabia–Eurasia, Arabia–Nubia, Eurasia–India) move more slowly than the 3 Myr NUVEL-1A average, perhaps reflecting long-term deceleration associated with continental collision. Several other plate pairs, including Nazca–Pacific, Nazca–South America and Nubia–South America, are experiencing slowing that began ∼25 Ma, the beginning of the current phase of Andean crustal shortening.

/pdf/revel-a-model-for-recent-plate-velocities-from-space-geodesy-18oq1lu9ey.pdf

REVEL: A model for Recent plate velocities from space geodesy

[1] Using the measurements of ∼726 GPS stations around the Tibetan Plateau, we determine the rigid rotation of the entire plateau in a Eurasia-fixed reference frame which can be best described by an Euler vector of (24.38° ± 0.42°N, 102.37° ± 0.42°E, 0.7096° ± 0.0206°/Ma). The rigid rotational component accommodates at least 50% of the northeastward thrust from India and dominates the eastward extrusion of the northern plateau. After removing the rigid rotation to highlight the interior deformation within the plateau, we find that the most remarkable interior deformation of the plateau is a “glacier-like flow” zone which starts at somewhere between the middle and western plateau, goes clockwise around the Eastern Himalayan Syntaxis (EHS), and ends at the southeast corner of the plateau with a fan-like front. The deformation feature of the southern plateau, especially the emergence of the flow zone could be attributed to an eastward escape of highly plastic upper crustal material driven by a lower crust viscous channel flow generated by lateral compression and gravitational buoyancy at the later developmental stage of the plateau. The first-order feature of crustal deformation of the northeastern plateau can be well explained by a three-dimensional elastic half-space dislocation model with rates of dislocation segments comparable to the ones from geological observations. In the eastern plateau, although GPS data show no significant convergence between the eastern margin of the plateau and the Sichuan Basin, a small but significant compressional strain rate component of ∼10.5 ± 2.8 nstrain/yr exists in a relatively narrow region around the eastern margin. In addition, a large part of the eastern plateau, northeast of the EHS, is not undergoing shortening along the northeastward convergence direction of the EHS but is stretching.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2005JB004120

Present‐day crustal motion within the Tibetan Plateau inferred from GPS measurements

[1] A new regional compilation of the drainage history in southeastern Tibet suggests that the modern rivers draining the plateau margin were once tributaries to a single, southward flowing system which drained into the South China Sea. Disruption of the paleo-drainage occurred by river capture and reversal prior to or coeval with the initiation of Miocene (?) uplift in eastern Tibet, including ∼2000 m of surface uplift of the lower plateau margin since reversal of the flow direction of the Yangtze River. Despite lateral changes in course due to capture and reversal, the superposition of eastward and southward draining rivers that cross the southeastern plateau margin suggests that uplift has occurred over long wavelengths (>1000 km), mimicking the present low-gradient topographic slope. Thus reorganization of drainage lines by capture and reversal events explains most of the peculiar patterns of the eastern plateau rivers, without having to appeal to large-magnitude tectonic shear.

/pdf/surface-uplift-tectonics-and-erosion-of-eastern-tibet-from-4j8wany0uh.pdf

Surface uplift, tectonics, and erosion of eastern Tibet from large-scale drainage patterns

We present and interpret Global Positioning System (GPS) measurements of crustal motions for the period 1991–1998 for a network encompassing the eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau and its foreland. Relative to a Eurasian frame defined by minimizing the velocities of 16 GPS stations in Europe, central Asia, and Siberia, stations within all parts of the plateau foreland in south China move 6–10 mm/yr east-southeast, indicating that the eastward movement within the plateau is part of a broader eastward movement that involves the plateau and its eastern and northern foreland. North of the plateau, foreland stations move northeastward at ∼10 mm/yr, indicating that the northern boundary of the deformation zone lies north of the plateau. With this realization of a Eurasian frame, the velocity of the GPS station at Bangalore in southern India implies that the northward motion of India is 5–12 mm/yr slower than that predicted from the NUVEL-1A plate reconstruction. Viewed relative to the South China Block, stations of the northeast plateau, bounded on the north by the Qilian Shan and the Altyn Tagh fault, move NNE to NE with velocities ranging from 19 mm/yr within the plateau to 5–11 mm/yr in its foreland. The Altyn Tagh fault shows left-lateral slip of ∼10 mm/yr at 95°E and shortening across the fault of <5 mm/yr. Stations south and west of the Xianshuihe/Xiaojiang fault system define a crustal fragment rotating clockwise at ∼10 mm/yr relative to the South China Block around the eastern Himalayan syntaxis. The GPS measurements indicate no significant shortening (< 3 mm/yr) within the Longmen Shan of the central eastern plateau and its adjacent foreland, although the Longmen Shan rise over 6 km in <100 km horizontal distance. Geological studies indicate that the deformational field was established diachronously in late Miocene to Pliocene time, was characterized by no east-west shortening of Tibetan crust, and has an inhomogeneous style of deformation resulting from a balance of different tectonic processes.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2000JB900092

Global Positioning System measurements from eastern Tibet and their implications for India/Eurasia intercontinental deformation

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Global Positioning System measurements from eastern Tibet and their implications for India/Eurasia intercontinental deformation