Contemporary crustal motion and deformation of South America plate

This paper presents the contemporary motion and active deformation of South America plate and relative motion of Nazca-South America plate using space geodetic data. The South America plate is moving at average 14.5 mm/a with an azimuth of 15.2° and shrinking in the west-east at 10.9 mm/a. The geodetic deformations of sites with respect to the South America plate are in quite good agreement with the estimated deformations from NNR-NUVEL1A, but the deformation of the western South America regions is very large.