The crustal movements of the Chinese mainland include an average regional movement trend of the mainland and complex local deformations. Thus, both trends in the crustal movement of the mainland and local distortions should be simultaneously taken into consideration in crustal movement estimations. A combined collocation model based on Euler vector (taken as trend parameters) and local distortions (taken as signals) is proposed in this paper. We assume that prior covariance matrices between signals and observations should be consistent with their uncertainties. Otherwise, the station movement estimates provided by the collocation will be distorted. Thus, an adaptive collocation estimator based on simplified Helmert variance components is applied. This means that the contributions of signals and observations to estimates of crustal movements are balanced and reasonable, and consistent covariance matrices of the signals and observations are achieved through the adjustment of the adaptive factor. The calculation of actual horizontal movements of the Chinese crust shows that the estimates of horizontal crustal movement velocities are made more accurate by the adaptive collocation model.
