Developments on the EPOS-IP pan-european strain rate product

Strain rates are of great importance for Solid Earth Sciences. Within the EU Horizon 2020 project EPOS-IP WP10 (Global Navigation Satellite System - GNSS thematic core services) a series of products focused on strain rates derived from GNSS data is envisaged. In this contribution, we present preliminary results from 452 permanent European GNSS stations, operating until 2017 and processed at UGA-CNRS (Université Grenoble Alpes, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). We calculate the strain-rate field using two open-source algorithms recommended by EPOS-IP, namely the VISR (Velocity Interpolation for Strain Rate) algorithm (Shen et al., 2015) and STIB (Strain Tensor from Inversion of Baselines), developed by Masson et al., (2014) as well as the SSPX software suite (Cardozo and Allmendinger, 2009). The vertical velocity component is ignored in this stage and other sources of deformation (GIA, hydrological, anthropogenic et al.) are not considered in the interpretation. We compare the results derived from different methods and discuss the similarities and differences. Overall, our first results reproduce the gross features of tectonic deformation in both Italy and Greece, such as NE-SW extension across the Apennines and N-S extension in Central Greece. It is anticipated that the significant increase of GNSS data amount associated with the operational phase of EPOS project in the forthcoming years will be of great value to perform an unprecedented, reliable strain rate computation over the western Eurasian plate.