iron control of past productivity in the coastal upwelling system off the atacama desert chile 1 biogenic opal and organic carbon vertical rain rates in sediment cores reveal a strong cyclicity in the productivity of the upwelling system off presently arid northern chile during the last 100 000 years changes in productivity are found to be in phase with the precessional cycle 20 000 years and with inputs of iron from the continent during austral summer insolation maxima increased precipitation and river runoff in the region appear to have brought high inputs of iron mainly from the andes to the coastal ocean enhancing primary productivity there we interpret our results as providing evidence for iron control of past productivity in this upwelling system and for a tight link between productivity and orbital forcing at midlatitudes

holocene rainfall variability in southern chile a marine record of latitudinal shifts of the southern westerlies geochemical and clay mineral parameters of a high accumulation marine sediment core from the chilean continental slope 41 s provide a 7700 yr record of rainfall variability in southern chile related to the position of the southern westerlies we especially use the iron content measured with a time resolution of ca 10 yr on average of 14 caccelerator mass spectrometry dated marine sediments as a proxy for the relative input of iron poor coastal range and iron rich andean source rocks variations in this input are most likely induced by rainfall changes in the continental hinterland of the core position based on these interpretations we find a pronounced rainfall variability on multicentennial to millennial time scales superimposed on generally more arid conditions during the middle holocene 7700 to 4000 cal yr b p compared to the late holocene 4000 to present this variability and thus changes in the position of the southern westerlies are first compared to regional terrestrial paleoclimate data sets from central and southern chile in order to derive possible wider implications and forcing mechanisms of the holocene latitudinal shifts of the southern westerlies we then compare our data to ice core records from both tropical south america and coastal antarctica these records show similar bands of variability centered at ca 900 and 1500 yr comparisons of band pass filters suggest a close connection of shifts of the southern westerlies to changes within the tropical climate system the correlation to climate conditions in coastal antarctica shows a more complicated picture with a phase shift at the beginning of the late holocene coinciding with the onset of the modern state of el nin o southern oscillation system the presented data provide further evidence that the well known millennial scale climate variability during the last glacial continued throughout the holocene fl 2001 elsevier science b v all rights reserved

sequential extraction of iron in marine sediments from the chilean continental margin iron content of the bulk marine sediment from the chilean continental margin has been used to infer millenial scale climate changes in southeast pacific lamy f klump j hebbeln d wefer g 2000 rapid climate change in northern chile over the last 80 ka recorded in a marine sediment core terra nova 12 8 13 changes of iron contents have been related to a varying contribution of andean fe rich versus coastal range fe poor source rocks ultimately controlled by continental rainfall changes however variations observed could also be produced by changes in the proportions of two components in the sediment a detrital component with low and constant fe content and an authigenic phase fe oxide pyrite apatite etc with high fe content a sequential extraction has been used to partition the total iron content in the sediment of core geob 7101 at the continental margin of chile the extraction steps included five fractions exchangeable bound to carbonates bound to fe mn oxides bound to organic matter and residual iron appeared to be mainly present in the residual fraction i e in the detrital component our study indicates that total fe or fe al may be used to infer millenial scales climate changes in the southeastern pacific

olivine spinel transitions experimental and thermodynamic constraints and implications for the nature of the 400 km seismic discontinuity the sequence of high pressure phase transitions in olivine is traditionally used as a model for seismic velocity variations in the 200 to 650 km depth interval in a mantle of peridotitic bulk composition it has been proposed that the observed seismic velocity increase at 400 km depth is too sharp and of too small a magnitude to be attributable to the phase change and that the upper mantle must thus be chemically stratified with the 400 km discontinuity being due either to a combination of phase changes in a layer of pyroxene garnet rich piclogite composition or to a chemical boundary between such a piclogite layer and an overlying peridotitic layer using available calorimetric thermoelastic and synthesis data and their associated experimental uncertainties we have derived internally consistent high pressure phase relations for the mg2sio4 fe2sio4 join we find that the divariant transition which is generally regarded as occurring over a broad depth interval for mantle olivine compositions is in fact extremely sharp the seismic discontinuity corresponding to the transition in mg0 9fe0 1 2sio4 should occur over a depth interval isothermal of about 6 km at a depth of approximately 400 km the sharpness of this transition is quite insensitive to uncertainties in the constraining calorimetric thermoelastic and synthesis data in addition we have computed seismic velocity profiles for a model mantle consisting of pure olivine of mg0 9fe0 1 2sio4 composition comparison of these computed profiles to those derived from recent seismic studies indicates that the magnitude of the observed velocity increase at 400 km depth is consistent with a mantle transition zone composed of about 60 70 olivine we conclude that there is no need to infer the existence of pyroxene garnet rich compositions such as eclogite or piclogite in the transition zone since an upper mantle of homogeneous olivine rich peridotitic composition is consistent with the available seismic velocity data

transition zone thickness beneath indonesia as inferred using the receiver function method for data from the jisnet regional broadband seismic network 1 we analyzed broadband waveforms recorded by the newly deployed japan indonesia seismic network to determine the depths of the 410 km and 660 km discontinuities and thickness of the mantle transition zone beneath indonesia by the receiver function method the discontinuities have an undulation with a maximum difference of 40 km with respect to the iasp91 model the thickness of the transition zone is well correlated with seismicity and seismic velocity anomalies suggesting that the topography is caused by temperature anomalies associated with the subducted slabs beneath indonesia

direct evidence for the undulation of the 660 km discontinuity beneath tonga comparison of japan and california array data short period seismograms of tonga deep earthquakes recorded by japanese and californian seismic networks are stacked to identify the s p converted wave associated with the 660 km discontinuity the travel time difference between this s p converted wave and the direct p wave is used to constrain the depth of the 660 km discontinuity analysis of a total of 29 events produced a detailed topographical map of the discontinuity beneath the tonga subduction zone two events which exhibit clear s p conversions in both japan and california data are selected to show directly the depth variations of the 660 km discontinuity adjacent to the subducting slab the s p conversion points on the ray paths to japan are observed to be approximately 10 to 30 km deeper than the conversion points on those to california which represents direct evidence for a slab induced depression of the 660 km discontinuity

upper mantle discontinuity structure in the region of the tonga subduction zone we study the mantle structure below the southwest pacific in order to examine the geometry of the tonga slab at depth and its interaction with the 410 and 660 km discontinuities hereafter called the 410 and the 660 we utilize data from stations of both the lau basin ocean bottom seismogram experiment and island stations of the southwest pacific seismic experiment the tectonic complexity of this region containing both the tonga subduction zone and the associated lau back arc spreading center make it an ideal area to investigate the upper mantle discontinuities using a high resolution technique such as common conversion point stacking of receiver functions we produce a high resolution image of the upper mantle near the tonga subduction zone to show the interaction between the discontinuities and the subducting slab our results show the 410 uplifted by 30 km near the tonga slab and the 660 depressed by 20 to 30 km as expected for thermally controlled olivine phase transitions

fast model building using demigration and single step ray migration this work provides explorationists with simple procedures to perform depth conversion more accurately than can be achieved with simple vertical layer cake depth conversion the use of image rays which are inadequate in structurally complex areas is avoided migrated time interpretations are still used and are demigrated using the kirchhoff time migration equations this backs out the effect of the time migration prior to a ray depth migration and enables the lateral shifts between the time migrated image and a depth migrated image to be quantified these shifts can be separated into a mismigration component and a refraction component the relative size of the components define whether time or depth migration is required and may be used to justify a remigration of the seismic image furthermore the tedious layer by layer approach to ray depth migration may be avoided by using the velocity depth model from the vertical layer cake depth conversion of the time migrated data for ray depth migration of the

seismic migration processing of p sv converted phases for mantle discontinuity structure beneath the snake river plain western united states we experiment with backprojection migration processing of teleseismic receiver functions from the snake river plain srp broadband seismic experiment previous analyses of data from this experiment have used a common midpoint cmp stacking approach a method widely applied for analysis of p sv converted phases receiver functions to obtain high resolution imaging of upper mantle discontinuities the cmp technique assumes that all p sv conversions are produced by flat lying structures and may not properly image dipping curved or laterally discontinuous interfaces in this paper we adopt a backprojection migration scheme to solve for an array of point scatterers that best produces the large suite of observed receiver functions we first perform synthetic experiments that illustrate the potential improvement of migration processing over cmp stacks application of the migration processing to the srp data set shows most of the major features as in the original cmp work but with a weaker 410 km discontinuity and a more intermittent discontinuity at 250 km apparent depth random resampling tests are also performed to assess the robustness of subtle features in our discontinuity images these tests show that a 20 km elevation of the 660 km discontinuity directly beneath the snake river plain is robust but that the variations in 410 km discontinuity topography that we observe are not stable upon resampling bright spots near 250 km apparent depth are robust upon resampling but interpretation of these features is complicated by possible sidelobe artifacts from topside moho reverberations

seismic attenuation tomography of the tonga fiji region using phase pair methods the anelastic structure of the region surrounding the tonga slab and lau back arc spreading center in the southwest pacific is studied using data from 12 broadband island stations and 30 ocean bottom seismographs two differential attenuation methods determine t over the frequency band 0 1 to 3 5 hz for earthquakes in the tonga slab the s p method measures the difference in spectral decay between p and s waves arriving at the same station the p p method measures the difference in spectral decay for p waves with different paths through the upper mantle eight hundred sixty phase pairs are used to invert for two dimensional 1 q structure using a nonnegative least squares algorithm a grid search method determines the q q ratio most compatible with both the s p and p p differential measurements the highest attenuation q 90 is found within the upper 100 km beneath the active portions of the lau basin extending westward to the lau ridge these regions probably delineate the source region for the back arc spreading center magmas expected to be within the upper 100 km based on petrological considerations the high attenuation regions also correlate well with zones of low p wave velocity determined by regional velocity tomography somewhat lower attenuation is found beneath the fiji plateau than beneath the lau basin the entire back arc is characterized by a gradual decrease in attenuation to a depth of 300 to 400 km the slab is imaged as a region of low attenuation q 900 material a q q ratio of 1 75 provides the best fit between the s p and p p data sets upon inversion spectral stacking shows no frequency dependence within the frequency band analyzed

coupled c s fe geochemistry in a rapidly accumulating marine sedimentary system diagenetic and depositional implications in the present study we have investigated the c s fe systematics in a sediment core md161 13 from the krishna godavari k g basin bay of bengal the core covers the late holocene period with high overall sedimentation rate of 573 cm kyr 1 pore fluid chemical analyses indicate that the depth of the present sulfate methane transition zone smtz is at 6 mbsf the ta ca mg so42 ratios suggest that both organoclastic degradation and anaerobic oxidation of methane aom drive sulfate reduction at the study site the positive correlation between total organic carbon content toc and chromium reducible sulfur crs content indicates marked influence of organoclastic sulfate reduction on sulfidization coupled occurrence of 34s enriched iron sulfide pyrite with 12c enriched authigenic carbonate zones is the possible records of paleo sulfate methane transition zones where aom driven focused sulfate reduction was likely fueled by sustained high methane flux from underlying gas rich zone aluminum normalized poorly reactive iron fepr al and la yb ratios suggest increasing contribution from deccan basalts relative to that of archean proterozoic granitic complex in sediment flux of krishna godavari basin during the last 4 kyr

multiple seismic discontinuities near the base of the transition zone in the earth s mantle the seismologically defined boundary between the transition zone in the earth s mantle 410 660 km depth and the underlying lower mantle is generally interpreted to result from the breakdown of the gamma spinel phase of olivine to magnesium perovskite and magnesiowustite laboratory measurements of these transformations of olivine have determined that the phase boundary has a negative clapeyron slope and does indeed occur near pressures corresponding to the base of the transition zone but a computational study has indicated that because of the presence of garnet minerals multiple seismic discontinuities might exist near a depth of 660 km ref 4 which would alter the simple negative correlation of changes in temperature with changes in the depth of the phase boundary in particular garnet minerals undergo exothermic transformations near this depth acting to complicate the phase relations and possibly effecting mantle convection processes in some regions here we present seismic evidence that supports the existence of such multiple transitions near a depth of 660 km beneath southern california the observations are consistent with having been generated by garnet transformations coupling with the dissociation of the gamma spinel phase of olivine temperature anomalies calculated from the imaged discontinuity depths using clapeyron slopes determined for the various transformations generally match those predicted from an independent p wave velocity model of the region

depression of the 660 km discontinuity beneath the tonga slab determined from near vertical scs reverberations the occurrence of the march 9 1994 mw 7 6 deep tonga earthquake during a temporary deployment of broadband seismographs provides an excellent opportunity to study the seismic discontinuity structure in the vicinity of a subducting slab near vertical scs reverberations from the 410 520 and 660 discontinuities are visible at 10 stations in the south pacific at frequencies between 0 003 0 033 hz without stacking we use a regional velocity model and ray theory to model the interval from scs to scs3 a grid search is then performed on the depth and impedance contrast at each of the seismic discontinuities to optimize the fit to both the underside and topside reflections stacked records indicate prominent discontinuities at 400 km and 665 km depth beneath and to the west of the slab and 410 km 500 km and 640 km to the east of the slab analysis of individual records suggests a local depression of 30 km in the 660 and a broadening of the transition zone directly beneath and to the west of the tonga slab in a region of possible near horizontal slab these results are consistent with a large cool region just to the west of the intersection of the tonga slab with the 660

southern ocean origin for the resumption of atlantic thermohaline circulation during deglaciation during the two most recent deglaciations the southern hemisphere warmed before greenland at the same time the northern atlantic ocean was exposed to meltwater discharge which is generally assumed to reduce the formation of north atlantic deep water yet during deglaciation the atlantic thermohaline circulation became more vigorous in the transition from a weak glacial to a strong interglacial mode here we use a three dimensional ocean circulation model to investigate the impact of southern ocean warming and the associated sea ice retreat on the atlantic thermohaline circulation we find that a gradual warming in the southern ocean during deglaciation induces an abrupt resumption of the interglacial mode of the thermohaline circulation triggered by increased mass transport into the atlantic ocean via the warm indian ocean and cold pacific ocean water route this effect prevails over the influence of meltwater discharge which would oppose a strengthening of the thermohaline circulation a southern ocean trigger for the transition into an interglacial mode of circulation provides a consistent picture of southern and northern hemispheric climate change at times of deglaciation in agreement with the available proxy records

late quaternary precessional cycles of terrigenous sediment input off the norte chico chile 27 5 s and palaeoclimatic implications abstract the palaeoclimatic conditions during the last glacial maximum lgm of southern south america and especially latitudinal shifts of the southern westerly wind belt are still discussed controversially longer palaeoclimatic records covering the late quaternary are rare a particularly sensitive area to late quaternary climatic changes is the norte chico northern chile because of its extreme climatic gradients small shifts of the present climatic zonation could cause significant variations of the terrestrial sedimentary environment which would be recorded in marine terrigenous sediments to unveil the history of shifting climatic zones in northern chile we present a sedimentological study of a marine sediment core geob 3375 1 from the continental slope off the norte chico 27 5 s sedimentological investigations include bulk and silt grain size determinations by sieving atterberg separation and detailed sedigraph analyses additionally clay mineralogical parameters were obtained by x ray diffraction methods the 14c dated core covering the time span from approximately 10 000 to 120 000 cal yr b p consists of hemipelagic sediments terrigenous sedimentological parameters reveal a strong cyclicity which is interpreted in terms of variations of sediment provenance modifications of the terrestrial weathering regimes and modes of sediment input to the ocean these interpretations imply cyclic variations between comparatively arid climates and more humid conditions with seasonal precipitation for northern chile 27 5 s through the late quaternary the cyclicity of the terrigenous sediment parameters is strongly dominated by precessional cycles for the palaeoclimatic signal this means that more humid conditions coincide with maxima of the precession index as e g during the lgm higher seasonal precipitation for this part of chile is most likely derived from frontal winter rain of the southern westerlies thus the data presented here favour not only an equatorward shift of this atmospheric circulation system during the lgm but also precession controlled latitudinal movements throughout the late quaternary precessional forcing of latitudinal movements of the westerly atmospheric circulation system may be conceivable through teleconnections to the northern hemisphere monsoonal system in the atlantic ocean region

late quaternary rapid climate change in northern chile analyses of terrigenous sediments from the chilean continental slope off the southern border of the atacama desert 27 5 s focusing on illite crystallinity and the fe al ratio of the sediments reveal a high frequency variability of the position of the southern westerlies which is very similar to the coeval short term climatic events known from greenland ice cores and from north atlantic sediments besides showing dominantly precession driven variability in precipitation over the andes these analyses also reveal rapid changes in weathering intensity along the chilean coastal range during the last 80 000 years these rapid changes occur at much shorter timescales than the 19 100 kyr orbital forcing of the milankovitch cycles

elastic properties of hydrous ringwoodite γ phase in mg2sio4 abstract single crystal elastic properties of hydrous ringwoodite are reported for samples that were synthesized at 19 gpa and 1300 c the mg si ratio is determined to be 1 95 by epma which is slightly lower than that of ideal anhydrous ringwoodite the h 2 o content determined by sims is 2 2 wt resulting in the stoichiometry mg 1 89 si 0 97 o 4 h 0 33 the lattice parameter a 8 0786 4 a and elastic constants were determined from a single crystal with x ray diffractometry and brillouin scattering spectroscopy the crystal structure is cubic fd3m with a unit cell volume which is 0 51 larger than that of the anhydrous ringwoodite the adiabatic single crystal elastic moduli of hydrous ringwoodite in gpa are c 11 281 6 c 44 117 4 c 12 92 5 the isotropic properties of hydrous ringwoodite are k vrh 155 4 and g vrh 107 3 which are about 16 and 10 smaller than those of anhydrous ringwoodite thus hydrous ringwoodite if present drastically reduces the seismic velocity in the mantle transition zone relative to anhydrous ringwoodite in addition our results show that the anisotropy is enhanced relative to anhydrous ringwoodite using the present results we discuss the 520 km seismic discontinuity in a wet mantle transition zone

global de correlation of the topography of transition zone discontinuities analysis of long period shear wave underside reflections from upper mantle discontinuities shows the shape of the 410 km discontinuity to be neither globally nor locally correlated with that of the 660 km discontinuity the long wavelength pattern of 410 topography is dominated by degree 1 spherical harmonics and has a reasonable correlation with the seismic velocity perturbations in the mantle above it the global topography of 660 dominated by degree 2 spherical harmonics is strongly correlated with shear wave velocity variations in the transition zone the poor correlation between the observed topography of the 410 and 660 km discontinuities is inconsistent with a simple model of large scale whole mantle flow thus implying a more complex pattern which includes at least temporary accumulation of subducted material in the transition zone ringwood and irifune nature 331 1988 131 136 tackley et al nature 361 1993 699 704 the modest seismic discontinuity at 520 km is well observed when the reflections are under mid age oceans but is not observed when they are under continental shields interpretation of this observation in terms of olivine depletion in the deep continental mantle indicates the possible existence of continent ocean chemical heterogeneity at depths exceeding 500 km

antarctic timing of surface water changes off chile and patagonian ice sheet response marine sediments from the chilean continental margin are used to infer millennial scale changes in southeast pacific surface ocean water properties and patagonian ice sheet extent since the last glacial period our data show a clear antarctic timing of sea surface temperature changes which appear systematically linked to meridional displacements in sea ice westerly winds and the circumpolar current system proxy data for ice sheet changes show a similar pattern as oceanographic variations offshore but reveal a variable glacier response time of up to 1000 years which may explain some of the current discrepancies among terrestrial records in southern south america

closing the gap between regional and global travel time tomography recent global travel time tomography studies by zhou 1996 and van der hilst et al 1997 have been performed with cell parameterizations of the order of those frequently used in regional tomography studies i e with cell sizes of 1 2 these new global models constitute a considerable improvement over previous results that were obtained with rather coarse parameterizations 5 cells the inferred structures are however of larger scale than is usually obtained in regional models and it is not clear where and if individual cells are actually resolved this study aims at resolving lateral heterogeneity on scales as small as 0 6 in the upper mantle and 1 2 3 in the lower mantle this allows for the adequate mapping of expected small scale structures induced by for example lithosphere subduction deep mantle upwellings and mid ocean ridges there are three major contributions that allow for this advancement first we employ an irregular grid of nonoverlapping cells adapted to the heterogeneous sampling of the earth s mantle by seismic waves spakman and bijwaard 1998 second we exploit the global data set of engdahl et al 1998 which is a reprocessed version of the global data set of the international seismological centre their reprocessing included hypocenter redetermination and phase reidentification finally we combine all data used p pp and pwp phases into nearly 5 million ray bundles with a limited spatial extent such that averaging over large mantle volumes is prevented while the signal to noise ratio is improved in the approximate solution of the huge inverse problem we obtain a variance reduction of 57 1 synthetic sensitivity tests indicate horizontal resolution on the scale of the smallest cells 0 6 or 1 2 in the shallow parts of subduction zones decreasing to approximately 2 3 resolution in well sampled regions in the lower mantle vertical resolution can be worse up to several hundreds of kilometers in subduction zones with rays predominantly pointing along dip important features of the solution are as follows 100 200 km thick high velocity slabs beneath all major subduction zones sometimes flattening in the transition zone and sometimes directly penetrating into the lower mantle large high velocity anomalies in the lower mantle that have been attributed to subduction of the tethys ocean and the farallon plate and low velocity anomalies continuing across the 660 km discontinuity to hotspots at the surface under iceland east africa the canary islands yellowstone and the society islands our findings corroborate that the 660 km boundary may resist but not prevent present day large scale mass transfer from upper to lower mantle or vice versa this observation confirms the results of previous global mantle studies that employed coarser parameterizations

receiver functions in the western united states with implications for upper mantle structure and dynamics 1 investigations into mechanisms driving surface tectonics commonly search for mantle sources but few observations constrain flow in the upper mantle and transition zone here variations in the upper mantle discontinuities at 410 km and 660 km below the western united states are revealed through mapping depths of compressional to shear wave conversions recorded by broadband seismometers the resulting image exhibits 20 and 30 km of topography on the 410 and 660 km discontinuities similar depth variations to those seen where subducting slabs of lithosphere reach the transition zone the pattern of discontinuity topography imaged here does not correlate with the surface tectonics of the rocky mountains colorado plateau or basin and range province providing no support for upward and downward flow at transition zone depths controlling surface topography and deformation in this region at least at scale lengths of a few hundred kilometers furthermore we find no clear correlation between the depths of the 410 and 660 km discontinuities undulations on the surfaces of both discontinuities appear to be spaced at distances of 800 km if the topography were due only to lateral temperature differences such differences would be comparable to those where slabs sink and might suggest separate convective flow above and below the transition zone alternatively the topography may reflect lateral variations in composition variations in the sharpness of converted phases across the region offer some support for compositional heterogeneity but the lack of a correlation between sharpness and depth casts doubt on this explanation for the variations in depth

fe speciation and fe al ratio in the sediments of southeastern arabian sea as an indicator of climate change aluminum titanium and iron are the major lithogeneous contributors to the marine sediment and their abundance varies strikingly with the intensity of monsoonal precipitation al and ti concentration in a sediment core sk 129 gc 05 from southeastern arabian sea exhibit very strong positive correlation r 0 92 n 140 suggesting their lithogenous association whereas ti and fe does not correlate so strongly r 0 44 this suggests that part of fe is present as structurally unsupported and is evident by two fold increased fe al ratio 0 87 average compared to upper continental crust 0 44 the presence of structurally unsupported fe is confirmed by the sequential leaching of fe which is associated with different fractions such as exchangeable 0 98 carbonate 1 98 fe mn oxide 30 8 organic carbon 4 7 and biogenic opal 11 4 which together constitutes nearly 50 of the bulk fe content there is a good correlation between time series fe al and differential solar insolation suggesting warmer and humid climatic condition resulting intense weathering of hinterland rocks associated with increased monsoonal precipitation probably decoupled soluble fe and its transportation to southeastern arabian sea

catastrophic overturn of the earth s mantle driven by multiple phase changes and internal heat generation the effects of phase changes and strong internal heat generation may combine to bring about brief but extremely intense episodes of rapid thermal convection in the earth s mantle numerical calculations using realistic thermodynamic properties for the exothermic olivine spinel and endothermic spinel perovskite magnesiowustite phase transitions suggest the transition region of the earth s mantle may act as a capacitor for subducting slabs slab material accumulates in the transition region until a threshold level of thermal buoyancy is reached and is then rapidly discharged into the lower mantle in my calculations this occurs as a catastrophic burst of convection lasting 10 myr with elevated heat transfer rates lasting 100 myr such episodes may be analogs to superplume activity which has been hypothesized to give rise to an intense episode of intra plate volcanism and stabilize the geodynamo against reversals the topography on the two phase change boundaries is found to be negatively correlated with the correlation becoming more negative during periods of rapid convection furthermore the results of this study suggest the transition region of the earth s mantle could be 250 k cooler on average and consequently more viscous than the surrounding mantle

topography on the 410 km seismic velocity discontinuity near subduction zones from stacking of ss sp and pp precursors we stack the teleseismic depth phases ss sp and pp produced by deep focus earthquakes to image precursory arrivals that result from near source underside reflections off the 410 km seismic velocity discontinuity hereinafter referred to as the 410 and use differential time measurements between these phases and their precursors to compute discontinuity depths near seven subduction zones around the pacific ocean margin we begin by selecting seismograms with high quality depth phase arrivals recorded by several long period networks between the years 1976 and 1996 filtering the waveforms and stacking them along theoretical travel time curves reveals clear precursors which vary in shape and timing we compute confidence levels to evaluate the reliability of the observed precursory features using a bootstrap method that randomly resamples the seismograms prior to stacking we measure the differential travel time between the reference pulse and the precursor using a cross correlation technique and convert this time to an apparent discontinuity depth using the isotropic preliminary reference earth model prem at 25 s period corrected to an oceanic crustal thickness the lateral resolution of our long period stacks for 410 topography is limited compared to that sometimes achieved in short period analyses but is much higher than that obtained from global ss precursor studies for most subduction zones the results indicate little change in the average depth to the 410 km discontinuity in the local areas sampled by the precursor bounce points compared to broad regional depths inferred from ss precursor results this implies that any large variations in depth to the 410 km discontinuity near subduction zones are limited to a narrow zone within the slab itself where they may be difficult to resolve with long period data coverage for the tonga and peru chile subduction zones is sufficiently dense that we can observe lateral variations in 410 depths in tonga the results suggest depth variations perpendicular to the slab of up to 33 km after correcting for probable lateral heterogeneity in velocity above 400 km depth and variations parallel to the slab orientation as large as 13 km the cross slab variation is consistent with the elevation of olivine phase transformations in cold regions the variation along strike suggests a more complex thermal heterogeneity that may be related to the subduction history of this region we see evidence for additional reflectors above the 410 in some of the waveform stacks but the inconsistency and weak amplitude of these features preclude definitive interpretations

seismic evidence of the lithosphere asthenosphere boundary beneath the tonga area southwestern pacific abstract we study the lithosphere asthenosphere boundary lab in the tonga subduction zone using four deep focal events recorded by the capital seismic network csn of china and the northeast china extended seismic array necessarray the existence and depths of the lab beneath the lau ridge are clearly revealed by the linear slant stacking of observed sp precursors sdp as illustrated by the reflected points of robust sdp phases from lab the depth of lab in the northern lau ridge is about 63 km with a range of 63 64 km in the northwest is about 77 km with a range of 76 78 km and in the south is about 72 km the uncertainty of determined depths is no more than 4 km given the effects of the picking errors of arrival times and velocity heterogeneities our results suggest that the oceanic lithosphere of the lau ridge is thinner in the northern part than in the northwestern and the southern parts according to the previous geodynamic and petrological studies the oceanic lithospheric thinning in the northern lau ridge should be related to the strong erosion of the active mantle convection in the back arc mantle wedge with the enrichment of the volatiles and melts

depth extent of the lau back arc spreading center and its relation to subduction processes seismic tomography and wave form inversion revealed that very slow velocity anomalies 5 to 7 percent beneath the active lau spreading center extend to 100 kilometer depth and are connected to moderately slow anomalies 2 to 4 percent in the mantle wedge to 400 kilometer depth these results indicate that geodynamic systems associated with back arc spreading are related to deep processes such as the convective circulation in the mantle wedge and deep dehydration reactions in the subducting slab the slow regions associated with the tonga arc and the lau back arc are separated at shallow levels but merge at depths greater than 100 kilometers suggesting that slab components of back arc magmas occur through mixing at these depths