Azerbaijan, Baku, Dec. 18 / Trend H. Valiyev /
The Republican Seismological Centre of the Azerbaijani National Academy of Sciences has installed 10 GPS stations to study horizontal crustal movements, the centre told Trend on Tuesday.
The global positioning system stations have been installed on the basis of the existing seismic stations in Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan. The total number of seismic stations is now 31.
Some 15 more stations are planned to be installed in January 2013. The total number of GPS stations will reach 25. They will be included into the general system of space geodesy with satellite communication.
At present, the centre has already begun to explore horizontal crustal movements.
GPS stations can determine the displacement of the earth's crust caused by earthquakes and accurately measure very weak oscillations of the earth's crust. All measurement data are sent to a computer centre supplemented by other types of measurements and used to predict the areas of high seismic activity.