The extended Burgers material (EBM) model provides a linear viscoelastic theory for
interpreting a variety of rock deformation phenomena in geophysics, playing an increasingly
important role in parameterizing laboratory data, providing seismic wave velocity and
attenuation interpretations, and in analyses of solid planetary tidal dispersion and quality
factor Q. At the heart of the EBM approach is the assumption of a distribution of relaxation
spectra tied to rock grain boundary and interior granular mobility. Furthermore, the model
incorporates an asymptotic long-term limiting behavior that is Maxwellian. Here we use the
extensively developed linear theory of viscoelasticity to isolate those parameters of EBM that
apply to both post-seismic relaxation processes involving flow of olivine rich upper mantle
material and to studies of tides, where periods of forcing range from 12 h to 18.6 years. The
isolated EBM parameters should also apply to theoretical and geodetic studies of glacial
isostatic adjustment, especially when the initiation of continuous cryospheric surface
unloading dates to the 20th or 21st century. Using analytical Laplace transformed solutions of
Boussinesq’s half-space load problem, we show that the effects of EBM transient rheology
may have substantial influence on geodetic interpretations of unloading induced crustal
motions even on time scales that are sub-decadal.