Houston16: A stable geodetic reference frame for subsidence and faulting study in the Houston metropolitan area, Texas, U.S.

Houston, Texas, is one of the earliest regions to employ continuous GPS technology for land subsidence monitoring. Currently, there are over 200 permanent GPS stations located in the greater Houston area. The need for a consistent and stable reference frame to precisely interpret local ground deformation has become critically important since the 1990s, because of the significant spreading of subsidence. We have established a stable Houston reference frame, designated Houston16, using publicly available GPS observations (>5 years) from 15 Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS) located outside of the greater Houston area. Applications of the reference frame in subsidence and faulting studies are demonstrated in this article. Houston16 is aligned in origin and scale with the International GNSS Reference Frame of 2008 (IGS08). A 7-parameter method was employed to transform the GPS-derived positional time series from IGS08 to Houston16. The primary product of this study is the seven parameters for transforming Earth-Centered-Earth-Fixed XYZ coordinates from IGS08 to Houston16. The frame stability of Houston16 is approximately 1 mm/year. Houston16 will be updated every few years to mitigate degradation of the frame's stability with time and to synchronize with future updates of the IGS reference frame. (C) 2018 Institute of Seismology, China Earthquake Administration, etc. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd.