With support from NASA's Solid Earth and Natural Hazards Program, a number of US institutions (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, and Scripps Institute of Oceanography), in cooperation with King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), are establishing a network of 5 continuously recording, on-line GPS stations broadly distributed around Saudi Arabia to contribute data directly to the International GPS Service (IGS). The University Navstar Consortium is providing technical assistance to KACST for these installations, two of which were recently installed at NAMA and HALY at the southern and northern extent of the Red Sea coast in Saudi Arabia.

These stations will substantially improve GPS tracking in this sparsely covered region and will tightly constrain Arabian plate motion. Quantitative constraints on Arabian plate motion are essential for understanding a wide range of tectonic problems and associated seismic hazards, including active rifting in the Red Sea, continental collision and associated mountain building in the Zagros, eastern Turkey, and the Caucasus, motion of the Sinai micro-plate, and fault slip rates on the East Anatolian and Dead Sea faults.