Modeling Long-Term Postseismic Deformation Following the 2020 Mw 7.0 Samos Earthquake Using Campaign and Continuous GNSS Observations

Highlights What are the main findings? What are the implications of the main findings?Highlights What are the main findings? What are the implications of the main findings?Abstract Postseismic deformation provides fundamental insights into earthquake-cycle processes, lithospheric rheology, and stress redistribution following large earthquakes. Although the 2020 Mw 7.0 Samos earthquake has been extensively investigated in terms of coseismic deformation and early postseismic behavior, the long-term evolution of deformation following the event remains poorly constrained. This study characterizes the long-term spatiotemporal evolution of postseismic deformation associated with the 2020 Mw 7.0 Samos earthquake using combined campaign and continuous GNSS observations. A total of 18 GNSS stations were analyzed over an approximately 4.5-year period following the earthquake. Pre-earthquake GNSS velocities were incorporated as prior constraints, while postseismic deformation was modeled using linear, logarithmic, exponential, and combined logarithmic-exponential functions. The preferred model for each station component was identified using the corrected Akaike Information Criterion (AICc), and model-selection robustness was evaluated through 1000 Monte Carlo observation-perturbation simulations. The results reveal a spatially heterogeneous postseismic deformation field with station-dependent temporal behavior. Among the nonlinear solutions passing the Monte Carlo and goodness-of-fit criteria, the seven single-process LOG and EXP solutions yielded characteristic relaxation times ranging from 182.6 to 730.5 days, with a median of 438.3 days. The two LOGEXP solutions additionally contained a logarithmic timescale of 109.6 days and exponential timescales of 292.2-438.3 days. These findings demonstrate that campaign GNSS observations, when integrated with continuous GNSS data and an objective statistical framework, can provide meaningful constraints on the long-term evolution of postseismic deformation despite sparse temporal sampling. More broadly, the results emphasize the strongly time-dependent nature of postseismic deformation and the critical role of observation timing in capturing its spatiotemporal evolution.