Short-Period Surface-Wave Tomography in the Continental United States—A Resource for Research

Author(s):  
Robert B. Herrmann ◽  
Charles J. Ammon ◽  
Harley M. Benz ◽  
Asiye Aziz-Zanjani ◽  
Joshua Boschelli

Abstract The variation of phase and group velocity dispersion of Love and Rayleigh waves was determined for the continental United States and adjacent Canada. By processing ambient noise from the broadband channels of the Transportable Array (TA) of USArray and several Program for the Array Seismic Studies of the Continental Lithosphere experiments and using some earthquake recordings, the effort was focused on determining dispersion down to periods as short as 2 s. The relatively short distances between TA stations permitted the use of a 25  km×25  km grid for the four independent tomographic inversions (Love and Rayleigh and phase and group velocity). One reason for trying to obtain short-period dispersion was to have a data set capable of constraining upper crust velocity models for use in determining regional moment tensors. The benefit of focusing on short-period dispersion is apparent in the tomography maps—shallow geologic structures such as the Mid-Continent Rift, and the Michigan, Illinois, Anadarko, Arkoma, and Appalachian basins are imaged. In our processing, we noted that the phase velocities were more robustly determined than the group velocities. We also noted that the inability to obtain dispersion at short periods shows distinct regional patterns that may be related to the local upper crust structure.

2019 ◽  
Vol 220 (3) ◽  
pp. 1657-1676 ◽  
Author(s):  
N I Adimah ◽  
S Padhy

SUMMARY The unusual complex lithospheric structure of Madagascar is a product of a number of important geological events, including: the Pan-African Orogeny, episodes of Late Cenozoic intraplate volcanism and several phases of deformation and metamorphism. Despite this rich history, its detailed crustal structure remains largely underexplored. Here, we take advantage of the recently obtained data set of the RHUM-RUM (Réunion Hotspot and Upper Mantle–Réunions Unterer Mantel) seismological experiment, in addition to previously available data sets to generate the first Rayleigh wave group velocity maps across the entire island at periods between 5 and 30 s using the ambient noise tomography technique. Prior to preliminary data preparation, data from Ocean Bottom Seismometers are cleaned of compliance and tilt noise. Cross-correlating noise records yielded over 1900 Rayleigh wave cross-correlation functions from which group velocities were measured to perform surface wave tomography. Dispersion curves extracted from group velocity tomographic maps are inverted to compute a 3-D shear velocity model of the region. Our velocity maps have shown relative improvement in imaging the three sedimentary basins in the western third of the island compared to those of previous studies. The Morondava basin southwest of the island is the broadest and contains the thickest sedimentary rocks while the Antsirinana basin at the northern tip is narrowest and thinnest. The lithosphere beneath the island is characterized by a heterogeneous crust which appears thickest at the centre but thins away towards the margins. A combined effect of uneven erosion of the crust and rifting accommodates our observations along the east coast. Average 1-D shear velocity models in six different tectonic units, support the causes of low velocity zones observed in the west coast of the island and reveal an intermediate-to-felsic Precambrian upper and middle crust consistent with findings of previous seismic studies. Our findings, especially at short periods provide new constraints on shallow crustal structure of the main island region.


1997 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 370-382 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jen-Kuang Chung ◽  
Yeong Tein Yeh

Abstract Strong ground motions in the period range of 1 to 5 sec observed in Taiwan in a dense network during the Tapu earthquake (ML = 5.8) of 15 December 1993 were dominated by fundamental-mode Rayleigh waves. The shallow crustal structure beneath this network was determined from the group velocity dispersion data using standard inversion techniques. Results show that an alluvial layer with a thickness of only about 160 m exists over the sedimentary structure in the western coastal plain. A clear lateral variation in the shear-wave velocity along a cross section perpendicular to the western structural grain (Ho, 1982) was resolved. For the purpose of retrieving the ground motions to confirm the proposed model, forward modeling with a two-dimensional finite-element method was used and agreed well with the observed seismograms when slightly lower velocities than those of the inversions were used. It is concluded that the velocity model estimated using group velocity data cannot definitively correspond to the real one at such short distances and in such a complex structure. On the basis of quantitative simulations, a very soft surface layer must be crucial in the interpretation of the slow wave trains with long duration and the rare prograde particle motions. The results suggest that these surface waves may be generated by the conversion of body waves at the boundary of the western coastal plain and foothills.


Geophysics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 86 (1) ◽  
pp. EN13-EN26
Author(s):  
Ilaria Barone ◽  
Emanuel Kästle ◽  
Claudio Strobbia ◽  
Giorgio Cassiani

Surface wave tomography (SWT) is a powerful and well-established technique to retrieve 3D shear-wave (S-wave) velocity models at the regional scale from earthquakes and seismic noise measurements. We have applied SWT to 3D active-source data, in which higher modes and heterogeneous spatial sampling make phase extraction challenging. First, synthetic traveltimes calculated on a dense, regular-spaced station array are used to test the performance of three different tomography algorithms (linearized inversion, Markov chain Monte Carlo [MCMC], and eikonal tomography). The tests suggest that the lowest misfit to the input model is achieved with the MCMC algorithm, at the cost of a much longer computational time. Then, real phases were extracted from a 3D exploration data set at different frequencies. This operation included an automated procedure to isolate the fundamental mode from higher order modes, phase unwrapping in two dimensions, and the estimation of the zero-offset phase. These phases are used to compute traveltimes between each source-receiver couple, which are input into the previously tested tomography algorithms. The resulting phase-velocity maps show good correspondence, highlighting the same geologic structures for all three methods. Finally, individual dispersion curves obtained by the superposition of phase-velocity maps at different frequencies are depth inverted to retrieve a 3D S-wave velocity model.


1997 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. D. Martínez ◽  
X. Lana ◽  
J. Badal ◽  
J. A. Canas ◽  
L. Pujades

An objective regionalization of the Mediterranean basin is derived from a tomographic study based on the fundamental mode of Rayleigh waves. The database is formed by seismic wavetrains recorded at very-broadband stations belonging to MedNet and other cooperative stations, located in the Mediterranean area. The data treatment consists of application of spectral filtering techniques aimed to determine path-averaged group velocities, computation of local group velocity maps for some periods and classification of the studied area in several homogeneous regions according to Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Average Linkage (AL) algorithms. Finally, the group velocity dispersion curves representing each homogeneous region are compared and possible correlation between these regions and seismotectonic and structural characteristics are discussed.


2021 ◽  
Vol 502 (1) ◽  
pp. 1299-1311
Author(s):  
Heidi B Thiemann ◽  
Andrew J Norton ◽  
Hugh J Dickinson ◽  
Adam McMaster ◽  
Ulrich C Kolb

ABSTRACT We present the first analysis of results from the SuperWASP variable stars Zooniverse project, which is aiming to classify 1.6 million phase-folded light curves of candidate stellar variables observed by the SuperWASP all sky survey with periods detected in the SuperWASP periodicity catalogue. The resultant data set currently contains >1 million classifications corresponding to >500 000 object–period combinations, provided by citizen–scientist volunteers. Volunteer-classified light curves have ∼89 per cent accuracy for detached and semidetached eclipsing binaries, but only ∼9 per cent accuracy for rotationally modulated variables, based on known objects. We demonstrate that this Zooniverse project will be valuable for both population studies of individual variable types and the identification of stellar variables for follow-up. We present preliminary findings on various unique and extreme variables in this analysis, including long-period contact binaries and binaries near the short-period cut-off, and we identify 301 previously unknown binaries and pulsators. We are now in the process of developing a web portal to enable other researchers to access the outputs of the SuperWASP variable stars project.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Johnston ◽  
Xiaohan Yan ◽  
Tatiana M. Anderson ◽  
Edwin A. Mitchell

AbstractThe effect of altitude on the risk of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) has been reported previously, but with conflicting findings. We aimed to examine whether the risk of sudden unexpected infant death (SUID) varies with altitude in the United States. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s Cohort Linked Birth/Infant Death Data Set for births between 2005 and 2010 were examined. County of birth was used to estimate altitude. Logistic regression and Generalized Additive Model (GAM) were used, adjusting for year, mother’s race, Hispanic origin, marital status, age, education and smoking, father’s age and race, number of prenatal visits, plurality, live birth order, and infant’s sex, birthweight and gestation. There were 25,305,778 live births over the 6-year study period. The total number of deaths from SUID in this period were 23,673 (rate = 0.94/1000 live births). In the logistic regression model there was a small, but statistically significant, increased risk of SUID associated with birth at > 8000 feet compared with < 6000 feet (aOR = 1.93; 95% CI 1.00–3.71). The GAM showed a similar increased risk over 8000 feet, but this was not statistically significant. Only 9245 (0.037%) of mothers gave birth at > 8000 feet during the study period and 10 deaths (0.042%) were attributed to SUID. The number of SUID deaths at this altitude in the United States is very small (10 deaths in 6 years).


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