A Discussion on the measurement and interpretation of changes of strain in the Earth - Potentialities of lunar laser ranging for measuring tectonic motions

Abstract

The lunar laser-ranging system at McDonald Observatory, Texas, is currently attaining accuracies of + 15 cm, and + 3 cm appears feasible. Numerical error analyses containing 97 parameters (35 of them for error sources) indicate that the + 3 cm system would measure station motions to + 1 cm/year accuracy within a year for cast—west motions and within about 3 years for north-south. Furthermore, the correlations of station motions with other parameters are low, so that it is unlikely that the estimate is too optimistic because of modelling inadequacies of the error analysis.