global p wave tomography on the effect of various mantle and core phases abstract in this work many global tomographic inversions and resolution tests are carried out to investigate the influence of various mantle and core phase data from the international seismological center isc data set on the determination of 3d velocity structure of the earth s interior our results show that when only the direct p data are used the resolution is good for most of the mantle except for the oceanic regions down to about 1000 km depth and for most of the d layer and pp rays can provide a better constraint on the structure down to the middle mantle in particular for the upper mantle under the oceans pcp can enhance the ray sampling of the middle and lower mantle around the pacific rim and europe while pdiff can help improve the spatial resolution in the lowermost mantle the outer core phases pkp pkikp and pkkp can improve the resolution in the lowermost mantle of the southern hemisphere and under oceanic regions when finer blocks or grid nodes are adopted to determine a high resolution model pp data are very useful for improving the upper mantle structure the resulting model inferred from all phases not only displays the general features contained in the previous global tomographic models but also reveals some new features for example the image of the hawaiian mantle plume is improved notably over the previous studies it is imaged as a continuous low velocity anomaly beneath the hawaiian hotspot from the core mantle boundary cmb to the surface implying that the hawaiian mantle plume indeed originates from the cmb low velocity anomalies along some mid oceanic ridges extend down to about 600 km depth our results suggested that later seismic phases are of great importance in better understanding the structure and dynamics of the earth s interior

formal inversion of isc arrival times for mantle p velocity structure summary seismic traveltime data are used to determine and assess a weighted least squares model of the 3 d p velocity structure of the earth s mantle a total of 682090 summary rays constructed from over three million isc traveltime observations are used to constrain velocity perturbations in 124966 by 6 cells an iterative block lu decomposition procedure applied on the massively parallel connection machine 2 cm 2 is used to compute a formal weighted least squares model of p velocity variations as well as the full resolution and covariance matrices it is found that the shallow mantle beneath the continents of the northern hemisphere is well resolved however the majority of mid oceanic features such as spreading ridges and hot spots are not well constrained as a function of depth the resolution is highest in the upper to mid mantle due to variations in ray coverage primarily because of ray geometry single blocks are not resolved below 1870km the estimates of spatial resolution constructed from the complete resolution matrix are useful in judging whether subducting lithosphere extends into the lower mantle the results indicate that possible extensions of subduction zones in the northern hemisphere are imaged reliably down to at least 1470 km however areas beneath most subduction zones in the southern hemisphere are averaged over scale lengths of 800km or more below a depth of 1070km velocity estimates for the mid to lower mantle beneath hawaii are the result of averaging over 1900 km or more generally vertical and lateral averaging of 600 to lo00 km is occurring in the depth range 2270 to 2670km p wave velocity values in the region just above the core mantle boundary cmb are large scale spatial averages 1500 km or more and individual cells are poorly resolved the model parameter standard error remains moderate throughout the lower mantle due to smaller traveltime errors associated with rays that bottom in this region these standard errors reach no more than 0 3 per cent of the jeffreys bullen average velocity the greatest standard errors 0 9 per cent of the average velocity are found in the upper mantle underlying the pacific basin these large parameter errors are due primarily to the poor ray coverage in the pacific coupled with the large arrival time uncertainties for p recordings in the epicentral distance range 0 to 20 the upper 200 km of the weighted least squares velocity model correlates strongly with known tectonic features a circum pacific ring of low velocity with a maximum of 2 per cent dominates the surface anomalies the most likely origin of this feature are the high temperatures associated with back arc magmatism the most conspicuous mid ocean velocity anomaly is iceland which appears as a strong low velocity region extending over many cells continental cratons appear as positive velocity 1 2 per cent anomalies extending to depths of 200 to 400km low velocities underly the continents of eurasia and north america at a depth range of 400 to 670 km in the mid mantle 670 to 1270 km deep a 1 2 per cent fast velocity anomaly encircles the region below the pacific basin a fast anomaly also underlies

global mantle heterogeneity and its influence on teleseismic regional tomography abstract a new global p wave tomography model is determined using a flexible grid parameterization this new model better reveals the mantle structure under the polar regions than the previous tomographic models the subducting slabs are generally imaged clearly as high velocity high v zones the young slabs are still subducting in the upper mantle and the mantle transition zone mtz whereas the old and ancient slabs are either stagnant in the mtz or have subducted down to the lower mantle even reaching the core mantle boundary low velocity low v anomalies are generally revealed in the mantle under the hotspot regions it seems that a variety of mantle upwelling plumes exist some strong plumes are visible in the whole mantle under the long living hotspots such as those in south central pacific africa hawaii and iceland whereas weak plumes are visible in only some depth range under the minor hotspots under the intraplate volcanoes in east eurasia bering sea and west alaska significant low v anomalies are revealed in the upper mantle which may reflect hot and wet upwelling associated with corner flows in the big mantle wedge bmw above the stagnant pacific slab in the mtz and perhaps deep slab dehydration as well the subduction triggered magmatism in the bmw may be a new class of mantle plumes we also used the new global model to investigate the influence of whole mantle heterogeneity on the determination of upper mantle tomography under japan with a teleseismic inversion method the results show that the mantle heterogeneities outside the target volume of regional tomography can cause significant changes 0 2 0 4 s to the observed relative travel time residuals of a distant earthquake the pattern of regional tomography remains the same even after correcting for the whole mantle heterogeneity but there are some changes in the amplitude of velocity anomalies in the regional tomography hence it is necessary to correct for the mantle heterogeneities outside the target volume so as to obtain a better regional tomography

the time averaged geomagnetic field global and regional biases for 0 5 ma summary palaeodirectional data from lava flows and marine sediments provide information about the long term structure and variability in the geomagnetic field we present a detailed analysis of the internal consistency and reliability of global compilations of sediment and lava flow data time averaged field models are constructed for normal and reverse polarity periods for the past 5 ma using the combined data sets nonzonal models are required to satisfy the lava flow data but not those from sediments alone this is in part because the sediment data are much noisier than those from lavas but is also a consequence of the site distributions and the way that inclination data sample the geomagnetic field generated in the earth s core different average field configurations for normal and reverse polarity periods are consistent with the palaeomagnetic directions however the differences are insignificant relative to the uncertainty in the average field models thus previous inferences of non antipodal normal and reverse polarity field geometries will need to be re examined using recently collected high quality palaeomagnetic data our new models indicate that current global sediment and lava flow data sets combined do not permit the unambiguous detection of northern hemisphere flux lobes in the 0 5 ma time averaged field highlighting the need for the collection of additional high latitude palaeomagnetic data anomalous time averaged field structure is seen in the pacific hemisphere centred just south of hawaii the location of the anomaly coincides with heterogeneities in the lower mantle inferred from seismological data the seismic observations can be partly explained by lateral temperature variations however they also suggest the presence of lateral compositional variations and or the presence of partial melt the role of such heterogeneities in influencing the geomagnetic field observed at the earth s surface remains an unresolved issue requiring higher resolution time averaged geomagnetic field models along with the integration of future results from seismology mineral physics and numerical simulations

lateral heterogeneity and azimuthal anisotropy in the north atlantic determined from ss s differential travel times to explore upper mantle heterogeneity beneath the north atlantic we have measured 70 ss s differential travel times using the waveform cross correlation method both the two way preliminary reference earth model prem and j b jeffreys bullen residuals exhibit a maximum variation of 17 s ranging from 10 to 7 and 9 to 8 s respectively the lack of correlation between ss s and s residuals along with the strong correlation between ss s and ss residuals suggests that ss s differential travel times eliminate source and receiver effects and sample the upper mantle anomalies near the ss bounce points without being strongly affected by lower mantle heterogeneities we find evidence for a strong local anomaly in the north atlantic residuals for bounce points immediately to the north of the azores gibraltar plate boundary average about 4 s faster than for the bounce points to the south of the boundary we infer that this velocity contrast exists in the lithosphere and continues below a depth of 200 km a series of linear multiple regression experiments demonstrate that variation in velocity with increasing age of the seafloor and azimuthal anisotropy are both significant contributors to the prem and j b residuals assuming that travel time delays are a linear function of the square root of the seafloor age we find the coefficient for age to be about 1 0 s m y this is smaller than but not significantly different from the corresponding slope for the s delays of intraplate earthquakes in the atlantic reported by j d duschenes and s c solomon 1977 and favors the presence of small amounts of water e g 0 1 in the upper mantle in modeling anisotropy we carry out an experiment using synthetic seismograms to examine the shear wave splitting phenomena in the anisotropic medium and investigate three possible forms for sh wave delay as a function of azimuth sinusoidal variations as a function of 2 4 and a combination of 4 predominant and 2 that mimics the delay expected in olivine crystals when the axis is aligned horizontally our regression models strongly prefer the predominance of a 4 to a 2 variation and the last type of anisotropy explains our data best from the preferred anisotropy model the olivine axis or the upper mantle shearing flow is inferred to be oriented n s the magnitude of the azimuthal variation suggests that anisotropy extends over a depth range of several hundred kilometers in the upper mantle

a possible station bias in travel time measurements reported to isc a station bias in the travel times of p waves may exist in the international seismological centre isc data base it appears that low gain seismographs report systematically late arrival times average station delays confirm this with low gain stations generally slower than high gain stations

attenuation tomography of the earth s mantle a review of current status resolving the lateral variations of attenuation in the deep mantle by tomographic methods holds potential for constraining its thermal structure and dynamics it is a challenging subject which has been addressed by only a few studies until now we here review the main motivations behind pursuing this challenge the difficult issues involved in separating effects of anelastic attenuation from scattering and focusing due to propagation in 3 d elastic structure and finally discuss the current status of global attenuation tomography

long wavelength s wave velocity structure throughout the mantle summary long wavelength s wave velocity anomalies are obtained for the entire mantle by inverting 6ooo long period 40 100s sh body waves and lo00 long period 100 500 s love waves in the shallow mantle the patterns of fast and slow velocity anomalies correlate well with age and tectonics in the depth range of 400 1000 km we find two antipodal fast velocity anomalies one in the western pacific and the other in south america they form a fairly strong i 2 anomaly moreover the 1 2 anomaly is the largest spherical harmonic component throughout the entire mantle except for in the layer of 1000 1300 km depth a fast velocity anomaly near the caribbean previously reported by several other investigators is found between the depths of 1000 and 1300km with diminishing amplitudes it can be traced to canada and the aleutians and may be related to old subducted slabs in the same depth interval similar size anomalies can be found in the middle of the pacific and in the indian ocean these could be checked by more detailed studies to judge the reliability of this study heterogeneity power has a peak at the surface and a secondary peak at the bottom of the mantle d consistent with the existence of chemical and or thermal boundary layers at the base of the mantle we also find a fast velocity anomaly which surrounds the pacific ocean this feature has been found by other researchers previously but its interpretation is difficult due to the trade off between velocity anomaly and core mantle boundary deformation

upper mantle structure beneath the siberian craton and surrounding areas based on regional tomographic inversion of p and pp travel times abstract we present a model of 3d seismic anomalies in the upper mantle beneath a part of northern asia that includes the siberian craton the west siberian plate the mountains framing siberia altai sayan and baikal and mongolia we used the differential travel times of pp and p phases to investigate the deep seismic structure beneath a large part of the siberian region where neither stations nor earthquake distributions are sufficient to apply other body wave tomographic schemes to show the reliability of the results based on inversion if the pp p residuals we performed various tests including 1 tests with odd even data 2 synthetic tests with checkerboard and realistic patterns and 3 inversions in other areas with clear structures furthermore for the southern part of the study area we present another model based on the inverse tomographic scheme its which uses travel times recorded by worldwide stations from events located in the study area in the overlapping areas these two independent models are generally consistent the main model of this study is obtained by merging the results of the pp p and its schemes this model shows a clear differentiation between the high velocity siberian craton and low velocity structures beneath the mountains framing siberia the area of cenozoic magmatism in western sayan is clearly associated with a low velocity anomaly at a depth of 600 700 km this low velocity pattern is located beneath the cratonic area while at shallower depths it seems to flow around the bottom of the thick craton lithosphere to the sw margin of the craton

size and geometry of microearthquake seismic ruptures from p and s pulse width data summary we propose a method to estimate the radius dip and strike of a circular seismic rupture through the inversion of first p and s wave pulse widths measured on microearthquake records the method is based on quite general numerically calibrated relationships relating source and q parameters under the assumption that the waves are radiated by a circular crack propagating at a constant rupture velocity to study the influence of both the source and receiver configuration and the properties of seismic rupture a detailed resolution study on synthetic data has been carried out for a microearthquake rupture the pulse width variations with azimuths depend critically on the fault plane orientation and the resolution on fault angle parameters can be qualitatively assessed by the parameter defined as the relative variation of the take off angles with respect to their average value a statistical approach based on mapping random deviations on data in the parameter space has been adopted to quantify the uncertainty affecting the fault plane estimates the method is applied to estimate the source parameters of an ml 3 1 event recorded during the 1997 umbria marche earthquake sequence for the considered event the fault plane solution is in good agreement with the estimates obtained by the method of the joint inversion of p polarities and s polarizations

multiscale seismic tomography and mantle dynamics abstract in this article we first introduce the methodology of multiscale seismic tomography and the way to interpret the obtained tomographic images and then review the significant recent results of multiscale seismic tomography with emphasis on mantle plumes and subducting slabs global and regional tomography shows that most of the slab materials under western pacific and east asia are stagnant in the mantle transition zone before finally collapsing down to the core mantle boundary as a result of large gravitational instability from phase transitions local and teleseismic tomography studies have imaged clearly the subducting slabs and arc magma chambers in the upper mantle wedge indicating that geodynamic systems associated with arc magmatism and back arc spreading are related to deep processes such as convective circulation in the mantle wedge and dehydration reactions of the subducting slab because most hotspots are located in poorly instrumented continental and oceanic regions 3 d crust and upper mantle structure is determined for only a few hotspots such as iceland yellowstone and eifel which are covered by seismic networks and plume like slow anomalies are revealed under those hotspots global tomography has revealed deep mantle plumes under the major hotspots such as hawaii iceland kerguelen south pacific and africa strong lateral heterogeneities are revealed at the bottom of the mantle which are associated with the deeply subducted slabs and the birth of mantle plumes a thorough understanding of the deep earth structure will only be achieved by a combination of more effective seismic imaging techniques and dense coverage of global seismic networks particularly in the oceans

global mapping of topography on the 660 km discontinuity long period precursors to the ss seismic phase are used to produce global maps of topography for the discontinuity at 660 km depth in the upper mantle these maps indicate discontinuity depth variations of up to 30 km and suggest a correlation between regional depressions in the 660 km discontinuity and subduction zones a result more consistent with models in which the subducting slabs are deflected horizontally at the discontinuity than with models of unhindered slab penetration into the lower mantle

mantle layering from scs reverberations 2 the transition zone this is the second paper in a four part sequence that examines the nature of mantle layering using the scsn phases and internal reflections observed within the reverberative interval of sh polarized seismograms mantle reflectivity profiles for 18 seismic corridors sampling portions of indonesia australia and the western and central pacific are constructed from low frequency 25 mhz scs reverberations i e scsn type phases reflected once from internal mantle discontinuities modeling the reflectivity profiles using synthetic seismograms yields precise path specific estimates of the travel times to the 410 km and 660 km discontinuities and their reflection coefficients the data are consistent with an olivine dominated model of the transition zone marked by two major phase transitions having average apparent depths of 414 2 km and 660 2 km and impedance contrasts of 0 046 0 010 and 0 072 0 010 respectively the interpath variations observed in the reverberation travel times imply that the topography on the two discontinuities is of the order of 20 km peak to peak and is negatively correlated consistent with an endothermic transition at 660 km whose clapeyron slope magnitude is comparable to that of the 410 km exothermic transition in the case of the 660 km discontinuity we have been able to supplement these long wavelength 1500 5000 km observations with an estimate of intrapath topography inferred from the frequency dependence of the 660 km reflection coefficient which gives peak to peak variations less than 40 km on scale lengths of 500 1500 km for the 660 km discontinuity the observed topography is significantly less than the dynamic topography expected for a simple compositional interface in regions of subduction however we do observed an intriguing negative correlation between the apparent depth and the reflection coefficient of the 660 km discontinuity which may involve small compositional variations plausible explanations for this correlation include heating of an initially cool chemical boundary layer gravitationally trapped above an endothermic phase transition loss of reflected energy due to local curvature or roughness of the reflector and or extreme topography occurring on a small compositional component to the discontinuity 40 of the total impedance contrast by stripping the 410 km and 660 km peaks from the composite path reflectivity profile we identify three minor reflectors at mean depths of 520 710 and 900 km the shallowest may mark the phase spinel phase transition the 710 km discontinuity can be attributed to the ilmenite gamet perovskite phase transition although changes in perovskite symmetry can potentially provide explanations for both the 710 km and 900 km features

aspherical earth structure from fundamental spheroidal mode data free oscillation data reveal heterogeneity in the earth s mantle whose geographical pattern is dominated by spherical harmonics of angular degree two and correlates well with the hydrostatically referenced geoid the heterogeneity can be modelled as localized in the transition zone 420 670 km depth and may be related to a large scale component of mantle convection

slab temperature and thickness from seismic tomography 2 izu bonin japan and kuril subduction zones delay times from teleseismic and local p wave arrivals are used to invert for a high resolution three dimensional velocity model beneath the northwest pacific the model shows high velocity slabs with average velocity anomalies of the order of 3 4 assuming the positive velocity deviations in the subducting lithosphere are to first order due to a temperature anomaly the results of a theoretical slab temperature profile based on the diffusion equation are converted to a synthetic slab velocity model temperature variations between the ambient mantle and the interior of the slab are converted to p wave velocity perturbations using dvp dt 4 8 10 4 km s 1 c 1 a nonlinear optimization scheme compares the tomograms obtained via tomography to the theoretically predicted models in order to determine the optimal values for slab thickness and mantle potential temperature using 1180 100 c as the potential temperature thickness estimates of 88 8 km 85 8 km and 84 8 km are obtained for the izu bonin japan and kuril slabs respectively a correlation exists between slab thickness and age which is strong if mantle temperature variations along the slab strike can be ruled out in the process of estimating slab thickness the predicted slab velocity model is used as a filter to enhance the initial minimum norm tomographic result the initial tomogram is modified to closely resemble the synthetic slab tomogram by using only null space components the use of the null space components guarantees that the enhanced solution will satisfy the original seismic delay times the enhanced slab images show very continuous and narrow slabs compared to the initial tomographic results

global p wave tomography of earth s lowermost mantle from partition modeling 1 determining the scale length magnitude and distribution of heterogeneity in the lowermost mantle is crucial to understanding whole mantle dynamics and yet it remains a much debated and ongoing challenge in geophysics common shortcomings of current seismically derived lowermost mantle models are incomplete raypath coverage arbitrary model parameterization inaccurate uncertainty estimates and an ad hoc definition of the misfit function in the optimization framework in response we present a new approach to global tomography apart from improving the existing raypath coverage using only high quality cross correlated waveforms the problem is addressed within a bayesian framework where explicit regularization of model parameters is not required we obtain high resolution images complete with uncertainty estimates of the lowermost mantle p wave velocity structure using a hand picked data set of pkpab df pkpbc df and pcp p differential travel times most importantly our results demonstrate that the root mean square of the p wave velocity variations in the lowermost mantle is approximately 0 87 which is 3 times larger than previous global scale estimates

whole mantle p wave tomography using p and pp p data 1 we measured pp p differential travel times on broadband seismograms of the incorporated research institutions for seismology iris network the measurement was made by cross correlating the observed pp waveform with the synthetic pp calculated from the observed p waveform the effect of seawater reverberation on the measurement is taken into account if the pp bounce point is under ocean the pp p times measured after low pass filtering is systematically shorter than those measured on raw broadband seismograms we show that low pass filtering tends to merge the precursory and postcursory phases into the main pp phase so that the measured pp p times are artificially short a cutoff frequency as high as 0 5 hz is required to isolate the main pp with such a high cutoff frequency we obtained a total of about 7000 pp p times the residuals relative to a reference p velocity model are consistent with those calculated for the aspherical model wepp2 obayashi et al 1997 when the pp bounce points are located in the region well resolved by wepp2 the pp p times combined with 2 million international seismological centre isc first arrival times were inverted for new model wepp2 this model renders a variance reduction of pp p residuals of 63 without compromising the fit to p residuals used originally in wepp2 in wepp2 the low velocity anomaly beneath hawaii is limited in depth down to the uppermost part of the lower mantle the high velocity anomaly of the russian continental lithosphere is underlain in the mantle transition zone by a body of low velocity anomaly

on isc pp and pp data and their use in delay time tomography of the caribbean region summary a major problem in p delay time tomography is the inhomogeneous sampling of mantle structure by the p wave ray paths resulting in low resolution in images of large regions of the upper mantle incorporation of pp and pp phases can improve the quality and reliability of tomographic images because they 1 sample earth structure not ordinarily sampled by direct p phases 2 add rays that are oblique to rays of direct phases which is especially important where the latter sample mantle structure in selected directions and 3 pp data better constrain the earthquake focal depths pp traveltimes have often been used in combination with p data in differential traveltime studies we show that the assumptions and approximations necessary for this approach are problematic and that they can be avoided when the p pp and p data are used in tomographic inversion we investigated the applicability of pp and pp delay times to the tomographic study of the aspherical mantle structure below the caribbean region the success of the application of data of the later arriving reflected waves depends critically on the quality of these data we examined possible sources of error in the isc pp and pp data and assessed the contribution to the delay times used in this study for the caribbean region analyses of the isc pp and pp delay times do not reveal biases due to effects of pp waveform distortions the asymmetry of the reflections or due to misidentifications of phases that reflect at a surface other than that assumed the noise level of pp and pp data is high with respect to data of the direct p wave this is accommodated by weighting with the inverse of the variance of the data of each of the three phases the independent information that is revealed from the pp and pp data results in modifications of tomographic images based solely on p data these modifications are important if the tomographic images are being used to understand the geodynamical history of convergent margins in the caribbean region we investigated the effect of adding data of later arriving phases to the isc p data with sensitivity tests we inverted synthetic delay times to which we added gaussian noise with a standard error typical for the data of the three seismic phases these tests demonstrate that the image resolution of shallow mantle structure is enhanced significantly by the incorporation of later arriving phases due to the absence of seismicity below 200 km the resolution improved less at deeper levels below the caribbean region in some poorly constrained parts of the solution the test results even indicate an apparent decrease of resolution this is explained by changes in the rate of convergence of the inversion algorithm in mantle regions where the effective sampling of structure improved by the addition of pp and pp wave ray paths the convergence was speeded up at the expense of the convergence rate in regions where fewer or no pp or pp wave ray paths were added a shortcoming of the resolution tests used in our study is that some specific problems of reported delay times are not reflected in synthetic data we observe that isc delay times of later arriving phases are not necessarily consistent with the reported hypocentral parameters as most isc reported earthquake locations are computed from direct p wave data for the pp data the inconsistency with event location not only results in a decrease of focal depths during relocation but in a bias of the imaged velocity perturbations as well this property of reported data is not modelled in resolution tests

robust inversion of iasp91 travel time residuals for mantle p and s velocity structure earthquake mislocations and station corrections using both p and s arrival time information 41 108 events in the international seismological centre isc catalog for the years 1964 to 1987 are relocated relative to the iasp91 velocity model the mean absolute horizontal relocation is 7 7 km and the mean absolute depth relocation is 9 1 km the mean absolute origin time shift is 1 2 s the relocation procedure increased the p residual standard deviation slightly from 2 3 s to 2 5 s while decreasing the s residual standard deviation from 6 8 s to 6 1 s when plotted as bottoming point averages the resulting iasp91 p and s arrival time residuals show coherent patterns as a function of geographic location an iterative lp residual norm minimization algorithm is used to estimate the set of p and s velocity variations as well as the earthquake relocation and seismographic station parameters which best explain the travel time residuals the procedure is robust in that extremely large travel time residuals which are common in the isc data do not unduly influence the velocity estimates both the p and s models of lateral heterogeneity contain prominent circum pacific low velocities 1 to 2 perturbations underlying the back arc basins between 35 and 200 km depth this ring of negative deviations continues into the depth interval 200 400 km the continental cratons are underlain by high velocity anomalies with maximum amplitudes of 2 iceland and the azores are underlain by low velocity mantle material that extends down to at least 400 km the benioff zones are only intermittently imaged as 1 2 high velocity regions in the uppermost 400 km they are best resolved in the p velocity variations both the p and s velocity models contain a circum pacific ring beneath the benioff zones of 1 2 positive velocity deviations in the depth range 660 870 km coherent high velocity features are seen below south america borneo tonga fiji the marianas and the northern kuriles the anomalies beneath south america and borneo extend into the 870 1070 km depth range below depths of 1270 km for p variations and 1070 km for s variations the amplitude of the heterogeneity has decreased significantly it is only in the lowermost mantle 2670 km to the core mantle boundary that the level of p heterogeneity rises significantly above the estimated noise level in this depth range a partial ring around the pacific basin is observed although this

step wise relocation of isc earthquake hypocenters for linearized tomographic imaging of slab structure a vast volume of seismic phase data computed from routinely determined hypocenter locations is presently available for seismic imaging techniques such as tomographic inversion and residual sphere analysis routinely reported earthquake hypocenters however can be in error by several tens of kilometers these biases in hypocenter location can result in the misidentification of seismic phases and the loss of structural signal in the seismic phase data thus the value of these data in constraining seismic images is significantly reduced furthermore hypocenter mislocations degrade the linearization of the tomographic problem and map into the images produced by tomographic inversion to obtain adequate reference hypocenters for linearized inversion we used iasp91 software and reported arrival times to reprocess isc hypocenters and phase data for northwest pacific earthquakes subsequently we inverted p and pp wave residuals for earth structure and source mis location we describe this step wise relocation of isc hypocenters which underlies the linearization of the tomographic inversion and compare the relocation vectors before and after inversion the hypocenter relocations determined prior to inversion are of the order of 10 km which is significant with regard to both the estimated standard errors and the effect on travel time residuals and systematic with regard to earthquake position in the subducted slab in contrast the spatial components of the relocation vectors determined upon inversion of p and pp residuals are up to an order of magnitude smaller do not reveal a correlation with location in the seismic zone and do not generally exceed the noise level the incorporation of pp data in the relocation was essential to remove the depth bias prior to inversion to retrieve slab signal that might have been absorbed in mislocation and to constrain the focal depth upon seismic inversion non linear inversion schemes will not be efficient in removing the depth bias or in retrieving lost slab signal unless seismic phases that contain additional information about the depth bias like the depth phase pp are used

whole mantle p wave travel time tomography abstract a method of tomographic inversion to obtain three dimensional velocity perturbations in the earth s whole mantle has been developed and applied to more than two million p wave arrival time data reported by international seismology center isc the model is parameterized with 32 768 blocks the divisions in latitude longitude and radius are 32 64 and 16 respectively horizontal cell size is 5 6 5 6 the layer thicknesses vary with depth 29 km just below the surface and 334 km just above the core mantle boundary starting from a spherically symmetric earth model we obtained a three dimensional model using the following iterative procedures first we relocated all the events second we backprojected the residual into the whole mantle third we refined the spherically symmetric earth model the solutions have been converged in five iterations we adopted the following techniques in the backprojection procedure the first order smoothness was introduced as a damping which makes the solution independent of the starting model and its apparent fluctuation minimal the basic equations for delay times and smoothness are solved using the conjugate gradient method an iterative method which guarantees the convergence of solution into the exact least squares solution the weight on the smoothness i e the damping factor was objectively determined by a simplified cross validation technique the final solution was obtained as an average of the ten solutions each of which was derived from one tenth of the total data set the reliability of the solution is examined in two ways 1 mapping the resolution given by the reconstruction of checkerboard patterns and 2 mapping the variance given from the gaussian noise input this is the first result which delineates the whole mantle structure with its reliability mapping the longest wavelength anomalies of the lower mantle are similar to those of previous studies by dziewonski 1984 and hager and clayton 1989 however the shorter wavelength patterns have many discrepancies the fast anomalies of the uppermost mantle beneath the shield and the slow anomalies beneath the active tectonic regions are clearly seen we also revealed the l 2 pattern at the transition zone reported by the previous surface wave and free oscillation studies the most striking feature is that of the fast anomalies lying along the extension of the large subducting plate up to depths of about 1000 km or more the resolving powers in these regions are generally good

seafloor age dependence of rayleigh wave phase velocities in the indian ocean variations in the phase velocity of fundamental mode rayleigh waves across the indian ocean are determined using two inversion approaches first variations in phase velocity as a function of seafloor age are estimated using a pure path age dependent inversion method second a two dimensional parameterization is used to solve for phase velocity within 1 25 1 25 grid cells rayleigh wave travel time delays have been measured between periods of 38 and 200 s the number of measurements in the study area ranges between 4139 paths at a period of 200 s and 22 272 paths at a period of 40 s at periods 100 s the phase velocity variations are strongly controlled by seafloor age and shown to be consistent with temperature variations predicted by the half space cooling model for a mantle potential temperature of 1400 c the inferred thermal structure beneath the indian ocean is most similar to the structure of the pacific upper mantle where phase velocities can also be explained by a half space cooling model the thermal structure is not consistent with that of the atlantic upper mantle which is best fit by a plate cooling model and requires a thin plate removing age dependent phase velocity from the 2 d maps of the indian ocean highlights anomalously high velocities at the rodriguez triple junction and the australian antarctic discordance and anomalously low velocities immediately to the west of the central indian ridge

the trade off between volumetric and topographic structure for seismic traveltimes 660 km topography and mantle structure summary synthetic body wave traveltime inversion experiments were performed to evaluate the effect of unmodelled 660km discontinuity topography on the inference of aspherical volumetric mantle structure synthetic residuals were computed for s waves refracted through a 660 km discontinuity with topography we employed a spherical harmonic parametrization for lateral variations of the topography of the 660 km discontinuity and the mantle velocity structure the radial dependence of the velocity structure in the mantle was parametrized in two ways smooth chebyshev polynomial functions and uniform shells the results of both para metrizations show that significant smearing of the input topographic signal appears in the models of volumetric mantle structure inferred from the synthetic data solving for higher order radial structure with the smooth chebyshev functions reduces the smearing but resolution is limited to the half wavelength of the radial basis functions more of the input synthetic residual variance is absorbed into the solution for volumetric structure by solving for higher order radial structure with smooth polynomials or with thinner shells directly below 660km depth however fundamental differences between the kernels for volumetric and topographic structure restrict recovery of the input signal to approximately 80 per cent this work points to the possible value of relating volumetric and topographic structure when inverting seismic observations this may be addressed by incorporating geodynamic modelling and mineral physics results into the modelling of seismic observations

tomographic inversions for mantle p wave velocity structure based on the minimization of l 2 and l 1 norms of international seismological centre travel time residuals we use international seismological centre isc p arrival data 1964 1987 and iterative algorithms which minimize the l1 and l2 residual norms to solve simultaneously for three dimensional p velocity variations in earth s mantle source mislocations and station corrections we find that the maximum velocity perturbations produced by the l1 minimization approximately 4 in our final model are relatively insensitive to smoothing and damping constraints therefore using an l1 norm criterion allows us to keep the bias introduced to the inversion to a minimum among the well resolved features contained in both the l1 and the l2 velocity models are a fast anomaly in the lower mantle beneath the tonga new hebrides subduction zone to a depth of 1670 km and another fast anomaly beneath the japanese island arc and eastern asia continuity between these anomalies and shallower fast anomalies is not clear a fast anomaly extending from 670 km to 2070 km depth appears beneath eastern north america the caribbean and north central south america a broad fast anomaly appears beneath eastern asia just above the core mantle boundary as well as several slow anomalies under the pacific basin of comparable size both models contain a circum pacific ring of 2 lower velocities in the depth range 0 200 km associated with back arc basins high velocities over 2 associated with the continental shields tend to disappear below 400 km though a significant region of high velocity remains beneath the siberian platform in the 400 to 670 km depth interval

mapping the upper mantle three dimensional modeling of earth structure by inversion of seismic waveforms a method is presented for the inversion of waveform data for the three dimensional distribution of seismic wave velocities the method is applied to data from the global digital networks international deployment of accelerometers global digital seismograph network the selected data set consists of some 2000 seismograms corresponding to 53 events and 870 paths the moment tensors of the earthquakes are determined through an iterative procedure which minimizes the corrupting influence of lateral heterogeneity a global model is constructed for shear wave velocity expanded up to degree and order 8 in spherical harmonics and described by a cubic polynomial in depth for the upper 670 km of the earth s mantle although no a priori information is incorporated the model predictions reproduce much of what is known about the dispersion of mantle waves for example high phase velocities for shields low velocities at ridges and a strong degree 2 pattern for rayleigh waves since the method makes use of complete waveforms overtone data are also included it is shown that the model is reproducible in that substantially the same model can be constructed from each half of the total data set considered independently the model shows that shields and ridges are major features in the depth interval 25 250 km the ridges of the southern pacific and the larger shields persist to 350 km but the southeast indian rise is underlain by a high velocity anomaly at this depth as is much of the mid atlantic ridge at 450 650 km the major features are a broad region of high velocities incorporating south america much of the south atlantic and parts of west africa a broad region of low velocities in the central and eastern pacific high velocities in the western pacific and a low velocity anomaly beneath the red sea and the gulf of aden in the absence of a crustal correction degrees 2 and 3 show a high positive correlation with the geoid paradoxically this is largely destroyed when the distribution in crustal thickness is taken into account spherical harmonic degrees 4 7 show a significant negative correlation

the acoustic signature of marine seep bubbles observations of seabed bubbles 62m depth at a natural marine hydrocarbon seep by passive acoustic and optical approaches are compared the acoustic and optical methods observed a bimodal distribution with peaks at 1500 and 1750hz and 2200 and 2800 m radius respectively radii were 20 lower than predicted by the minnaert formula frequency shifts were observed for bubbles emitted within a few milliseconds and were attributed to coupling between nearby bubbles surfactants also may have played a role

the 3 d shear wave structure in the mantle by overtone waveform inversion ii inversion of x waves r waves and g waves summary the 3 d upper mantle structure from the surface of the earth to a depth of about 1000 km is obtained by inverting waveforms of fundamental and higher mode surface waves minor and major arc waves of r waves g waves and x waves higher mode wave packets are used as basic data two features of the solution seem fairly robust one is the shallow structure in the upper few hundred kilometres which is strongly correlated with the age of the crust the second feature is the deep fast velocity anomaly near the western pacific indonesia philippines and mariana region and its antipodal region of south america both of which are subduction zones which forms a strong l 2 pattern simple slab models with 100 km thicknesses of 10 per cent faster velocity material do not explain such large scale fast velocity anomalies this may indicate large scale deformation of the 670 km discontinuity piling up of slabs in the upper mantle or thickening lithosphere in the lower mantle or large horizontal motions of subducted material these results are stable whether an earth model 1066a or prem is used as a starting model

tomographic inversion of p and pp data for aspherical mantle structure below the northwest pacific region summary to investigate the morphology of subducted slab in the mantle below northwest pacific island arcs we inverted traveltime residuals for aspherical variations in p wave propagation velocity relative to the radially symmetric iasp91 reference model the tomographic method used is based on a step wise linearization of the inversion problem first we relocated isc international seismological centre hypocentres with re identified p and pp phase data using the iasp91 traveltime tables the variance of p residuals relative to iasp91 traveltimes was 17 per cent less than the variance of p data reported by the isc relative to the jeffreys bullen j b traveltime tables second we performed a linearized lsqr inversion for earth structure and source relocation with the p and pp residuals obtained from the first step using iasp91 as the reference model for seismic velocities the incorporation of the depth phase pp in the tomographic inversions has two major advantages 1 the pp data provide constraints on focal depth and thus reduce the trade off between source relocation and structure and 2 the pp ray paths improve the sampling of earth structure in the shallow mantle and transition zone we used more than 2 times 106 and about 1 times 105p and pp wave traveltime residuals respectively from about 40 000 earthquakes with epicentres in the study region that were recorded at one or more of the 2300 globally distributed seismological stations considered in this study we assessed the spatial resolution in the tomographic images with checker board type sensitivity tests these tests reveal high resolution of upper mantle and transition zone structure particularly below the central part of our study region structure with wavelengths of the order of 100 km is resolved below japan whereas structure with wavelengths of the order of 300 km is well resolved below the kuril izu bonin and ryukyu arcs small scale structure is poorly resolved in depth below the northern part of the kuril kamchatka arc and below the izu bonin and mariana arcs this limits the interpretation of slab structure and mantle flow from tomographic images alone with this limitation in mind we conclude from the tomographic images that subducted slab deflects in the mantle transition zone below the geographical area encompassed by the kuril basin the japan sea and the northern part of the philippine sea this is in good agreement with the results of other recently published tomographic studies the occurrence of earthquakes several hundred kilometres off the inclined wadati benioff seismic zones and inferences about 660 km discontinuity topography in contrast slab like structures of high p wave velocity are imaged in the lower mantle below the deepest earthquakes of the northern kuril kamchatka and mariana seismic zones this is indicative of local slab penetration of the lower mantle from tomographic images we cannot discern between compositionally or thermally induced variations in seismic velocity however with regard to the nature of the boundary between upper and lower mantle our observations argue against either compositional mantle layering with large contrasts in intrinsic density or phase changes with steep clapeyron slopes

constraints on upper mantle discontinuities from observations of long period reflected and converted phases stacked images combining over 5 years of long period global digital seismograph network data reveal many phases associated with reflections and conversions from upper mantle discontinuities these images show travel time and amplitude relative to a reference phase which is aligned and normalized on all seismograms prior to stacking results obtained for p s ss and pp reference arrivals resolve numerous phases from discontinuities near 410 and 660 km while some of the stacks also show evidence for a weaker discontinuity near 520 km phases of particular interest include p and sh multiples resulting from topside reflections precursors to ss from underside reflections and p to sv converted phases these phases can be clearly seen both in the waveform stacks and in cross correlation analysis of individual seismograms travel times for these arrivals are converted to discontinuity depths relative to velocities in the preliminary reference earth model and empirical corrections are applied for the effects of lateral velocity variations in the upper mantle average apparent depths to the discontinuities for the different phases agree to within 3 km for the 410 km discontinuity to within 4 km for the 520 km discontinuity and to within 8 km for the 660 km discontinuity the best global averages are obtained from the ss precursor data which indicate discontinuities at 415 519 and 659 km discontinuity depths obtained from the p to sv converted phases at over 35 individual seismic stations exhibit variations of less than 20 km apparent depths to the 660 km discontinuity consistently show greater variability than depths to the 410 km discontinuity supporting recent laboratory results which indicate that the clapeyron slope for the 660 km discontinuity is significantly larger in magnitude than the slope for the 410 km discontinuity precursors to ss seen between 110 and 180 are particularly useful for mapping possible lateral variations in discontinuity depths since each arrival can be associated with a single underside reflection point apparent discontinuity depths computed from ss precursors for different tectonic regions agree to within about 5 km the ss precursors have especially good coverage near the subducting slabs in the northwest pacific analysis of apparent discontinuity depths in this area suggests the presence of a broad 1000 to 1500 km wide region near the slab in which the 660 km discontinuity is depressed by about 20 km measuring absolute amplitudes for these phases is difficult due to the large corrections required to compensate for the effects of incoherent stacking relative amplitude analysis suggests that the p and s wave impedance changes at 410 km are about 0 8 1 1 times the size of the changes at 660 km and that the contrasts at 520 km are between 0 3 and 0 6 of the changes at 410 km

the effect of topography of upper mantle discontinuities on ss precursors using the spectral element method we explored the effect of topography of upper mantle discontinuities on the traveltimes of ss precursors recorded on transverse component seismograms the latter are routinely used to infer the topography of mantle transition zone discontinuities the step from precursory traveltimes to topographic changes is mainly done using linearised ray theory or sometimes using finite frequency kernels we simulated exact seismograms in 1 d and 3 d elastic models of the mantle in a second simulation we added topography to the discontinuities we compared the waveforms obtained with and without topography by cross correlation of the ss precursors since we did not add noise the precursors are visible in individual seismograms without the need of stacking the resulting time anomalies were then converted into topographic variations and compared to the original topographic models based on the correlation between initial and inferred models and provided that ray coverage is good we found that linearised ray theory gives a relatively good idea on the location of the uplifts and depressions of the discontinuities it seriously underestimates the amplitude of the topographic variations by a factor ranging between 2 and 7 real data depend on the 3 d elastic structure and the topography all studies to date correct for the 3 d elastic effects assuming that the traveltimes can be linearly decomposed into a structure and a discontinuity part we found a strong non linearity in this decomposition which cannot be modelled without a fully non linear inversion for elastic structure and discontinuities simultaneously

long wavelength character of subducted slabs in the lower mantle abstract the high resolution seismic tomography provides the detailed information about the fate of the subducted plates in the mantle while the slab deformation in the transition zone is quite complex and differs among the individual subduction zones it could be generally concluded that most slabs seem to penetrate into the lower mantle the character of the fast seismic velocity anomalies however changes when the slabs cross the 670 km discontinuity while in the upper mantle tomography resolves relatively narrow plate like structures in the lower mantle it rather indicates thick blobs of seismically fast material such thickening of the downgoing slabs is traditionally attributed to the effect of the viscosity increase in the lower mantle here we study the deformation of the slabs in the lower mantle in a viscous model with a non linear composite rheology including the diffusion creep the dislocation creep and a power law stress limiter we perform numerical simulations of the subduction process in a 2d cartesian domain and concentrate especially on the effect of the change of the rheological parameters across the 670 km boundary on the slab deformation in the upper part of the lower mantle the thickening or the buckling of the plate is indeed observed in the models with relatively low yield stress 0 1 gpa of the stress limiting mechanism and with a viscosity increase at the 670 km discontinuity further we show that both the major mantle phase transitions and the strength of the crust layer have significant consequences for the creation of the buckling instabilities in the lower mantle

topography of the 400 km discontinuity from observations of long period p400p phases summary new evidence is presented for lateral variation of the depth of upper mantle discontinuities this evidence is derived from an analysis of amplitude of p400p phases underside reflections from the 400 km discontinuity for great circle paths with bounce points in the upper mantle near the hawaii emperor hotspot chain the data are long period from wwssn sro and rstn stations the epicentral distance ranges from 95 to 115 which ensures that no other major phases arrive in the time window of interest observed p400p amplitudes are compared with synthetic amplitudes for both a laterally homogeneous model and models including 3 d topography on the discontinuities the observations permit models of topography that can be characterized by undulations of the 400 km discontinuity with wavelengths in the range 600 2000 km and peak to peak amplitude of the order of 30 40 km such long wavelength structure causes quite strong de focusing of pdp phases synthetic pdp waveforms reveal that topography not only affects its amplitude but also smears out the pdp wave causing overlap between different pdp phases this mechanism is proposed as the reason for the lack of well developed pdp phases reported in the literature the fact that the waveforms can be seriously distorted prohibits the use of pdp phases in a waveform inversion the curvature of the discontinuity can be explained as the signature of convection currents crossing the discontinuity although the data cover the hawaii hotspot no signature of a plume structure can be detected in the data probably because the resolving power of the data is too low

travel time residuals of pp waves reflected under the central atlantic ocean abstract travel time residuals of pp for waves generated in south and central america and recorded in africa and europe after reflection under the central atlantic ocean are studied to show possible structural variations in the reflection area the ridge appears as a zone of positive residuals 1 0 s indicative of lower velocities and is clearly differentiated from the surrounding oceanic basins where residuals are negative 3 2 s the ridge influence extends up to about 400 km from the crest

global upper mantle structure from long period differential travel times we have made over ten thousand measurements of pp p and ss s differential travel times from long period global digital seismograph network recordings of all events with mb 5 5 which occurred during the years 1976 to 1986 we have obtained reasonable global coverage with very good sampling of several regions of the world the residuals range from 5 to 5 s for pp p and 12 to 12 s for ss s and reveal a large scale pattern of heterogeneity when plotted at the reflected phase s bounce point our experiments indicate that lower mantle structure and source receiver structure can each contribute approximately 0 5 s to our measured pp p residuals so there is considerable signal to be explained the pattern observed in the pp p measurements is similar to the pattern observed in the ss s measurements with the ss s residuals 2 to 4 times larger in magnitude comparisons of our measured residuals to those predicted by the upper mantle models of woodhouse and dziewonski show that the overall patterns are quite similar but the amplitude of the model residuals is roughly a factor of 2 too small comparisons with the predictions of a whole mantle model of tanimoto again shows that the predicted pattern of residuals is reasonably consistent with the observations but now the predicted residuals are too large by about a factor of 2 this variation in predicted amplitudes is probably mainly due to differences in the near surface structure of the models we have also binned our measurements according to the tectonic regionalization gtr1 of jordan and find a qualitative correlation of average residual with tectonic region in particular precambrian shields show a strong anomaly and there is a correlation of residual size with the age of oceanic crust at the bounce point for all tectonic regions the ratio of ss s to pp p residuals is approximately 2 this ratio is consistent with a thermal origin for the observed signal finally our measurements show no compelling evidence for azimuthal anisotropy which might be related to fossil spreading direction or the direction of absolute plate motion such a signal is probably overwhelmed by the large signal from three dimensional structure

imaging upper mantle discontinuity topography using underside reflection data this paper presents a method to invert underside reflection p d p or s d s arrivals data for lateral depth variations of upper mantle discontinuities combining traveltime and amplitude data the method greatly improves the resolution of small scale undulations obtained by existing imaging methods and does not suffer from the long wavelength biases that are likely to be present in currently available models existing inversion methods account for the large size of the fresnel zone of underside reflections but not for its complexity arising from the mini max traveltime nature of pp and ss related waves this neglect results in long wavelength artefacts from small scale undulations of the discontinuities obscurring true long wavelength depth variations the inversion method presented in this paper uses a complex valued sensitivity kernel derived from the representation of underside reflections through a kirchhoff integral formulation the sensitivity kernel accounts for the varying sensitivity of the waveforms to discontinuity structure over the fresnel zone the method is applied to a large synthetic data set the data set consists of p d p amplitudes and traveltimes the results show that the new inversion method resolves depth variations on a lateral scale that is smaller than the size of the fresnel zone of individual underside reflections but larger than the dominant wavelength retaining the resolution of large scale variations the results presented here suggest that the discontinuity depth variations induced by slab penetration of the 670 discontinuity could be resolved by current broad band p670p data sets

global mantle tomography progress status in the past 10 years abstract we review the present status of global mantle tomography and discuss two main classes of models that have been developed in the past 10 years p velocity models based on large datasets of travel times from the international seismological centre bulletins often referred to as high resolution models and s velocity models based on a combination of surface wave and hand picked body wave travel times or waveforms referred to as long wavelength models we discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses as well as progress in the resolution of other physical parameters such as anisotropy anelasticity density and bulk sound velocity using tomographic approaches we present the view that future improvements in global seismic tomography require the utilization of the rich information contained in complete broadband seismic waveforms this is presently within our reach owing to theoretical progress as well as the increase in computational power in recent years

seismic tomography of the earth s mantle the analysis of information contained in seismograms is the most promis ing tool for retrieving the three dimensional structure of the earth s mantle and thereby improving our understanding of its dynamics the procedure through which three dimensional images of different parts of the earth s interior arc obtained by inversion of a set of observables measured on the surface of the earth is commonly termed tomography by analogy with the medical procedure with which it shares many aspects of methodology but with much less favorable experimental conditions ideally one would like to be able to model entire seismograms over a wide frequency band for a large number of uniformly distributed sources and stations in order to obtain an optimal illumination of the inhomogeneities appropriate for tomographic inversion in practice a number of difficulties and limitations arise onc is the nonuniform distribution of sources and receivers seis micity is concentrated at plate boundaries and the distribution of con tinental and island areas leaves large portions of the oceans unin strumented another difficulty is our limited ability to accurately forward model the effects of wave propagation in a realistic earth which presents departures from a spherically symmetric referencc model of both elastic anc1astic and isotropic anisotropic nature this is why until now the simplest kind of tomography travel time tomography has prevailed relying on simplifying assumptions concerning the interaction of asphericity with propagating seismic waves ray theory and the laws of geometrical optics in their

source parameters and three dimensional attenuation structure from the inversion of microearthquake pulse width data method and synthetic tests we propose a new method to determine source parameters and attenuation structure of a three dimensional medium based on first p rise time and total pulse width measurements from microearthquake data the effects of fault finiteness on seismic radiation are taken into account by assuming the rupture model for a circular crack of sato and hirasawa 1973 ray theory synthetic seismograms in a constant q anelastic medium are computed to derive a set of nonlinear equations which relate the source and attenuation parameters fault radius orientation of the fault plane and quality factor to the pulse width data half and total duration of the p waveforms the numerically built relationships are used to compute the direct problem in the framework of a nonlinear inversion scheme based on the modified downhill simplex method the validity and robustness of the inversion method are tested by synthetic simulations by assuming the sources and receivers configuration of the seismic passive experiment conducted in the campi flegrei caldera southern italy during the last microearthquake crisis 1982 1984 different heterogeneous q models have been considered in order to assess the uncertainty and resolution of source and attenuation parameters for the given acquisition layout the results of this simulation study indicate that first pulse width data from a local network permit retrieval with sufficient accuracy of the heterogeneous q structure and fault radii a rather dense azimuthal coverage of the sources is instead needed to recover the angles in particular the fault strike which define the fault orientation

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

prospecting for water in the transition zone d ln vs d ln vp abstract we report the values of r d ln vs d ln vp due to water as a function of pressure for mg 2 sio 4 olivine wadsleyite ringwoodite the results show that ringwoodite has significantly lower r than olivine and wadsleyite due to the reason that bulk modulus of ringwoodite is more sensitive to water than shear modulus r of ringwoodite decreases with pressure while r of olivine and wadsleyite increases with pressure r reported here was calculated using theoretical method derived equation of states r due to temperature is also reported as a comparison of r due to water the local value of r in the upper mantle and transition zone can discriminate between lateral variations of water content and temperature as the origin of lateral seismic variations

whole earth structure estimated from seismic arrival times the arrival times of 10 compressional and shear phases p s pp pcp ss scs pk pab pk pbc pk pdf sk sac and two sets of differential times ss s410s and ss s660s are used to infer the earth s three dimensional structure with the exception of ss sds the raw data are composed of arrival times from the international seismological centre isc catalogue the isc events have been relocated using p and s phases and the ak135 radial earth model a total of 818 655 summary arrival times constrain lateral velocity variations in the crust mantle and core we also determine relocation parameters for all events stations corrections for each phase boundary topography 410 km 660 km core mantle boundary inner core boundary and inner core anisotropy variations our model of p and s velocity variations in the crust and mantle contains the general features observed in other body wave inversions a low velocity ring around the pacific ocean basin in the depth range 35 400 km high velocity anomalies associated with subducting slabs most prominent in the depth range 660 1070 km and high velocity anomalies surrounding the pacific basin just above the core mantle boundary in the outer core there is evidence of a latitudinal variation in velocity approaching 0 6 in magnitude with lower p velocities at the poles and higher velocities near the equator this pattern is observed throughout the outer core but is most prominent in the depth range 3671 4071 km and near the inner core boundary synthetic tests indicate that outer core features are moderately resolvable and inversions of random arrival times indicates that the anomalies are a factor of 2 above the estimated parameter noise level lateral heterogeneity in the inner core trades off with anisotropy resulting in poor resolution of isotropic velocity variations anisotropy in the inner core is predominantly subparallel to the earth s axis and of the order of 3 but this value can decrease if more inner core isotropic lateral heterogeneity is allowed a comparison of structure above and below the core mantle boundary cmb indicates that velocity heterogeneity is uncorrelated across the cmb but there is a moderate correlation between cmb topograpy and outer core heterogeneity an inversion in which the pk pdf residuals were absent indicates that the latitudinal pattern of outer core velocity variations is not due to the influence of inner core velocity structure

aspherical heterogeneity of the mantle from phase velocities of mantle waves long period surface waves are used to map the lateral heterogeneity of the upper 100 600 km of the mantle there is good correlation of velocity with surface tectonics and heat flow convergence regions are generally slow for love waves and fast for rayleigh waves back arc basins have slower than average shallow mantle some island arcs show evidence of fast material at greater depth deep seated slow anomalies underlie the red sea afar region of north east africa western north american northern east pacific rise indian ocean triple junction and the tasman sea campbell plateau regions the fastest regions are in the north central australia new guinea and the south atlantic

on the timing and nature of the multiple phases of slope instability on eastern rockall bank northeast atlantic one of the most challenging tasks when studying large submarine landslides is determining whether the landslide was initiated as a single large event a chain of events closely spaced in time or multiple events separated by long periods of time as all have implications in risk assessments in this study we combine new multichannel seismic profiles and new sediment cores with bathymetric data to test whether the rockall bank slide complex offshore western ireland is the composite of multiple slope collapse events and if so to differentiate them we conclude that there have been at least three voluminous episodes of slope collapse separated by long periods of slope stability a fourth less voluminous event and possibly a fifth more localized event the oldest event slide a 200 km3 is estimated to be several hundred thousand years old the second event slide b 125 km3 took place at the same location as slide a reactivating the same scar nearly 200 ka ago possibly through retrogression of the scarp slide c 400 km3 took place 22 ka ago and occurred further north from the other slides slide d was a much smaller event that happened 10 ka ago while the most recent event albeit very small scale took place within the last 1 000 years this study highlights the need to thoroughly investigate large slide complexes to evaluate event sequencing as seismic studies may hide multiple small scale events this work also reveals that the same slide scarps can be reactivated and generate slides with different flow behaviors

seismic heterogeneity in the mantle strong shear wave signature of slabs from joint tomography abstract the primary source of information on heterogeneity within the earth comes from seismic tomography a powerful tool for examining the character of heterogeneity comes from the comparison of images of bulk sound and shear wavespeed extracted in a single inversion since this isolates the dependencies on the elastic moduli however particularly in such multi parameter inversions there are many hidden facets which can have a strong influence on the results such as the weightings between parameters and in the misfit functions joint inversion with restricted data sets giving comparable cover for p and s waves provides useful checks on more inclusive studies and can provide relatively high resolution in some areas the relative behaviour of bulk sound and shear wavespeed can provide a useful guide to the definition of heterogeneity regimes for subduction zones a large part of the tomographic signal comes from s wavespeed variations in the upper mantle and transition there can be significant bulk sound speed contributions for younger slabs and in stagnant slabs associated with slab roll back for subducted oceanic lithosphere older than about 90 ma shear wavespeed variations nearly always are dominant and so the p wave images are controlled by shear modulus variations the narrow segments of fast wavespeeds in the depth range 900 1500 km in the lower mantle are dominated by s variations with very little bulk sound contribution deep in the mantle there are many fast features without obvious association with subduction in the last 100 ma which suggests long lived preservation of components of the geodynamic cycle

seismic waveform inversion for core mantle boundary topography the topography of the core mantle boundary cmb is directly linked to the dynamics of both the mantle and the outer core although it is poorly constrained and understood recent studies have produced topography models with mutual agreement up to degree 2 a broad band waveform inversion strategy is introduced and applied here with relatively low computational cost and based on a first order born approximation its performance is validated using synthetic waveforms calculated in theoretical earth models that include different topography patterns with varying lateral wavelengths from 600 to 2500 km and magnitudes 10 km peak to peak the source receiver geometry focuses mainly on the pdiff pkp pcp and scs phases the results show that pkp branches pcp and scs generally perform well and in a similar fashion while pdiff yields unsatisfactory results we investigate also how 3 d mantle correction influences the output models and find that despite the disturbance introduced the models recovered do not appear to be biased provided that the 3 d model is correct using cross correlated traveltimes we derive new topography models from both p and s waves the static corrections used to remove the mantle effect are likely to affect the inversion compromising the agreement between models derived from p and s data by modelling traveltime residuals starting from sensitivity kernels we show how the simultaneous use of volumetric and boundary kernels can reduce the bias coming from mantle structures the joint inversion approach should be the only reliable method to invert for cmb topography using absolute cross correlation traveltimes

measurements of mantle wave velocities and inversion for lateral heterogeneities and anisotropy 3 inversion lateral heterogeneity in the earth s upper mantle is investigated by inverting dispersion curves of long period surface waves 100 330 s models for seven different tectonic regions are derived by inversion of regionalized great circle phase velocity measurements from our previous studies we also obtain a representation of upper mantle heterogeneities with no a priori regionalization from the inversion of the degree 6 spherical harmonic expansion of phase and group velocities the data are from the observation of about 200 paths for love waves and 250 paths for rayleigh waves for both the regionalized and the spherical harmonic inversions corrections are applied to take into account lateral variations in crustal thickness and other shallow parameters these corrections are found to be important especially at low spherical harmonic order the trench region and fast velocities down to 250 km under shields below 200 km under the oceans both s velocity and s anisotropy support a model of small scale convection in which cold blobs detach from the bottom of the lithosphere when its age is large enough the spherical harmonic models clearly demonstrate a posteriori the relation between surface tectonics and s velocity heterogeneities in the first 250 km all shields are fast most ridges are slow below 300 km a belt of fast mantle follows the pacific subduction zones however at greater depths large scale heterogeneities that seem to bear no relationship to surface tectonics are observed the most prominent feature at 450 km is a fast velocity region under the south atlantic ocean smaller scale heterogeneities that are not related to surface tectonics are also mapped at shallower depths an anomalously slow region centered in the south central pacific is possibly linked to intense hot spot activity a very fast region southeast of south america may be related to subduction of old pacific plate between 200 and 400 km a belt of sv sh anisotropy follows part of the ridge and subduction systems indicating vertical mantle flow in these regions the spherical harmonic results open new horizons for the understanding of convection in the mantle perspectives for the improvement of the models presented are discussed

tomographic imaging of the lowermost mantle with differential times of refracted and diffracted core phases pkp pdiff the mapping of variations in p wave speed in the deep mantle is restricted by the uneven sampling of p waves in particular beneath the southern hemisphere to enhance data coverage we augmented the 1 6 million summary rays of p pp and pwp that we used in previous studies with differential travel times of diffracted and refracted core phases for the core refracted differential travel time residuals pkpab pkpdf and pkpab pkpbc we used 1383 cross correlated digital waveforms as well as 27 000 routinely processed bulletin data we used the waveform data to define quality criteria for the selection and reduction of the bulletin pkp data for pkpdf pdiff we only considered 543 records derived from waveform cross correlation no pcp data were used in this study we used optical ray theory to calculate the ray paths associated with the p pp pwp and pkp data which are measured at 1 hz however to account for the large fresnel zones of the low frequency 50 mhz pkpdf pdiff data we estimated the three dimensional shape of the frechet sensitivity kernels from kernels calculated by normal mode summation the use of these kernels allows us to properly distribute the sensitivity for a given seismic phase over a large mantle volume while allowing the high frequency data to constrain small scale structure the differential times are relatively insensitive to source mislocation and to structure in the shallow mantle beneath source and receivers and they have previously been interpreted exclusively in terms of lateral structure directly above the core mantle boundary cmb however images thus obtained can be contaminated by effects of small scale structure elsewhere in the mantle here we do not make a priori assumptions about the mantle source of anomalous time differentials from test inversions we conclude that both upper and lower mantle structures that are poorly resolved by p data can be mapped into the core along pkp paths but that the effect of outer core structures if any on the mantle model is small compared to the inversion of the p pp and pwp alone the inclusion of the pkpab pkpdf and pkpab pkpbc and pkpdf pdiff data improves the resolution of structure beneath 2200 km depth in particular the joint inversion puts better constraints on the long wavelength variations in the very deep mantle and yields an increase in the amplitude of velocity perturbations near the cmb that is in agreement with but still smaller than inferences from shear wave studies resolution tests indicate that in some regions the enhanced definition of structure is significant but in most regions the improvements are subtle and structure remains poorly resolved in large regions of the mantle

tomography on pp p waves and its application for investigation of the upper mantle in central siberia abstract we develop the method of tomographic inversion called rr r scheme which is based on joint use of teleseismic p or s refracted rays and corresponding pp or ss rays with bounce points located within a study region this scheme allows imaging the deep seismic structure beneath blank areas where there are neither recording stations nor earthquakes utilization of differential travel times makes it possible to avoid the difficulty of source and station corrections which cause problems in teleseismic tomography the rr r scheme has been applied to more than 10 000 ray pairs from the isc database to investigate a large region from the north arctic ocean to the northern part of china and mongolia inversion was carried out in several separate windows covering the study area down to the depth of 530 km velocity anomalies were computed in grid nodes distributed in the study 3d area according to ray density the tomography results from different windows were combined into one general map of the lithospheric structure in central siberia principal positive p wave velocity anomalies 1 3 down to 400 km are associated with the precambrian siberian craton negative velocity anomalies are related to the thin lithosphere of the west siberian plate the altai mountains and the hangai plateau 3 1 in the depth range 30 to 430 km a strong negative anomaly beneath the precambrian hangai block is apparently associated with a mantle plume positive velocity anomalies in sedimentary basins at southern siberia are believed to have the crustal origin

spectra of mantle shear wave velocity structure summary we applied the stochastic method of gudmundsson davies clayton 1990 which was applied to isc p wave data to teleseismic isc s wave data to obtain an independent estimate of mantle structure we inverted the variance of s wave traveltime residuals of bundles of rays to obtain a description of the spectrum of lateral heterogeneity as a function of depth through the mantle the technique yields robust estimates of the traveltime scattering power the product of a characteristic scalelength of heterogeneity and the mean square of slowness perturbations we can estimate the characteristic scalelength half width from the autocovariance which can be reconstructed from the spectra hence by division we can estimate the root mean square slowness by extrapolating the variance of bundles of rays to bundles of zero cross sectional area we can also estimate the scale incoherent signal which is a plausible estimate of the noise in the data which is removed from the data we find that most of the structure generating shear wave traveltime residuals is located in the uppermost mantle about half of the structure is short scale harmonic degree 1 50 the large scale structure 1 50 has a half width of about 500 km in the upper half of the mantle this s wave half width is consistent with the p wave half widths determined by gudmundsson et al 1990 the s wave half width in the lower half of the mantle is poorly constrained it varies from 500 to 3000km which spans the better constrained value of 1200 km found by gudmundsson et al 1990 for p waves the incoherent scatter suggests that the signal to noise ratio of the s wave data set is around 1 5 assuming that the compressional and shear wave velocity variations are correlated then the signal weighted value of the ratio d in y ld in y is 2 as also found in normal mode studies this is much larger than the value of 0 8 1 4 suggested by laboratory experiments undertaken at atmospheric pressure there is no evidence of periodicity in the traveltime autocovariance this suggests little or no periodicity in the underlying convection the short half width through most of the mantle suggests high rayleigh number convection with its attendant small scale structures the power decreases by an order of magnitude or more in going from the upper mantle to the lower mantle the same as found by gudmundsson et al 1990 for p waves this large difference suggests either a change in convective regime and or a difference in the temperature sensitivity of elastic constants in both layers the increased short scale structure at the top of the mantle suggests that a large part of the seismic signature at this boundary is compositional since one would expect a red spectrum for a thermal boundary layer the derived spectra between 1 10 and i 50 are similar in shape to spectra from the mantle convection simulations of glatzmaier 1988 with a rayleigh number of 106 107 which would suggest layered convection if the comparison is valid

lateral variations in mantle velocity structure and discontinuities determined from p pp s ss and ss sds travel time residuals on the basis of p pp s ss arrival times and ss s410s ss s660s differential times we construct models of mantle p and s velocity structure and boundary topography of the 410 km and 660 km discontinuities events from the catalog of the international seismological centre isc are relocated relative to the international association of seismology and physics of the earth s interior 1991 iasp91 velocity model using both p and s arrival times the arrival times are corrected for ellipticity and the pp and ss residuals are corrected for the topography at the bounce point the cap averaged pp p and ss s differential time residuals plotted at the pp and ss surface reflection points form broad coherent patterns the geographic distribution of the cap averaged residuals agrees quite well with pp p and ss s differential time residuals derived from long period global digital seismograph network gdsn data a robust lp inversion scheme is used to infer global mantle structure synthetic tests indicate that for regions well sampled by ss s410s and ss s660s differential times the velocity estimates are not seriously contaminated by the topography of the 410 and 660 km discontinuities however estimates of boundary deflections may be influenced by extensive p and s velocity variations of 3 or greater we find the 410 km discontinuity to be depressed by as much as 24 km beneath north america conversely the discontinuity is deflected upward underneath eurasia in some regions the topography of the 660 km discontinuity is quite distinct from that of the 410 km discontinuity but the two appear to be positively correlated a series of depressions are found at several intersections of the 660 km discontinuity with known subduction zones the elevated topography in the 410 km discontinuity beneath europe is underlain by a trough in the 660 km discontinuity a number of subduction zones are characterized by a thinning of the transition zone negative p and s velocity anomalies underlying back arc basins and tectonically active continental regions encircle the pacific where they are resolved the stable continental cratons are systematically positive velocity features that extend below 200 km with the inclusion of pp and ss travel time residuals we are better able to constrain midmantle structure most notably in the depth range 35 660 km beneath the northwest pacific we observe high p velocity where they are resolved mid ocean ridges are most clearly imaged as low velocity features in the s model the northern portion of the mid atlantic ridge is underlain by negative s velocity anomalies in the pacific the east pacific rise is an extensive low s velocity anomaly

mapping the lower mantle determination of lateral heterogeneity in p velocity up to degree and order 6 the data from the international seismological centre bulletins for the years 1964 1979 are used to derive a three dimensional model of lateral variations of the p velocity in the lower mantle unlike previous studies in which such perturbations were represented by a blocklike parameterization we seek the solution in the form r k 0k l 0l m 0l k r kalm cos m kblm sin m plm cos some 500 000 travel time residuals for teleseismic distances from 5000 earthquakes are used in an iterative procedure to derive the coefficients a and b the maximum k and l used are 4 and 6 respectively in each iteration in addition to solving for the three dimensional structure we also relocate all the earthquakes perturb the average travel time curve and determine station corrections for over 1000 stations particular attention is given to the problem of weighting the individual observations in order to avoid as much as possible the bias due to the uneven distribution of sources and receivers the resulting model shows a high level of perturbations just below the 670 km discontinuity and just above the core mantle boundary where the maximum perturbations reach 1 1 5 of the average velocity even for this highly smoothed model at a depth of 2000 km the rms perturbations are some 3 to 4 times lower than at either of the two boundaries the model predicts well the large scale pattern of observed travel time residuals for various source regions except for the distinct effects of the subduction zones the most striking large scale three dimensional feature of the model is a ring of high velocities circumscribing the pacific basin within a depth range from 1000 km to the core mantle boundary if the proportionality between perturbations in the velocity and temperature is assumed the derived pattern of anomalies could be consistent with a two boundary layer model of convection in the lower mantle some caution however should be exercised in interpreting the results near the 670 km discontinuity where the resolving power of our data set is limited by the lack of adequate control of the upper mantle structure at the same time a significant global increase in the level of perturbations in the lowermost mantle is established beyond question the results of dziewonski et al 1977 on the correlation between the equivalent geoid and the observed geoid for the angular order numbers 2 and 3 is confirmed but there is no significant correlation for degrees from 4 to 6 these calculations are made for the rigid earth richards and hager this issue show that introduction of finite viscosity can change the sign of a geoid anomaly in addition recent studies of lateral variations in the shear velocity reveal the presence of large scale anomalies in the upper mantle thus while the inferences made here with respect to the origin of the gravest orders of the geopotential field are not conclusive they point the way in which results from seismology can be used to address some of the basic questions of geodynamics

mapping of upper mantle structure from differential pp p travel time residuals abstract p and pp travel time residuals have been collected from 23 quarters of the regional catalog of earthquakes of the international seismological centre isc the difference in travel time residuals between pp and p are used as an indicator of the p delay time near the pp reflection point global maps of these differential travel time residuals are used to study lateral heterogeneity in the crust and upper mantle two of the regions studied have mean differential travel time residuals significantly different at greater than the 95 confidence level from the global mean of the differential travel time residuals in the central pacific southeast of hawaii differential pp p travel time residuals of 3 8 0 36 s are observed these observations imply an average p delay time of 1 1 0 38 s average p delay times of 0 67 0 20 s are observed beneath the tibetan plateau and the western portion of the people s republic of china these travel time variations basically agree in location and sign with the surface wave results of tanimoto and anderson

precursors to p p re examined using broad band data summary observations of underside p wave reflections from discontinuities deep within the upper mantle which precede the p p phase have provided important constraints on the existence and physical properties of these dynamically critical features in this study we extend earlier work by examining for the first time broad band recordings of those earthquakes for which one would expect to observe p p and its associated precursors p dp an exhaustive search of 20 yr of carnegie data and 11 yr of grafenberg data uncovered a number of fine p p observations but in only one or perhaps two instances are there evidence of a precursor from near 670 km depth these null results are consistent with what has been reported in earlier studies and provide us with an opportunity to estimate the variability of p velocity near 670 km or alternatively the scale length of discontinuity topography which acts to defocus the precursor this has been done by using the reflectivity and gaussian beam methods to compute synthetic seismograms for a suite of 1 d and 2 d earth models which vary slightly from prem we find that the null data may be satisfied either by i reducing the prem impedance jump at 670 km from 8 5 to 4 5 per cent ii smoothing this 8 5 per cent jump linearly over a zone 15 30km thick or iii imposing deformations in the 670 km discontinuity as small as 10 km in amplitude and 300 km in wavelength for the one case of an observed precursor the relative size of the underside reflection and main p p phase suggests that in this instance the precursor s amplitude is correctly predicted by prem

resolution uncertainty and whole earth tomography 1 using the arrival times of 10 distinct phases from the international seismological center catalogue p s pp pcp ss scs pkpab pkpbc pkpdf sksac and two sets of differential times ss s410s and ss s660s we estimate the p and s velocity structure of the whole earth mantle outer core and inner core boundary topography of four interfaces within the earth hypocentral relocation parameters and station corrections the entire catalogue is relocated and reassociated using the radial velocity model ak135 both p and s phases are used in the relocation of over 41 000 events in depth isotropic velocity variations within the earth are parameterized by 22 layers lateral variations in shear and compressional velocity within the layers are represented by one of two grids in the mantle each layer is subdivided into 4560 equal volume cells of dimension 3 3 at the equator however in the outer and inner core the cell size is increased to 6 6 this change in grid spacing accounts for decreasing cell volumes with depth and variations in sampling between the mantle and core previous attempts using a fine grid throughout the earth resulted in poor resolution of core structure with the current grid the resolution of velocity heterogeneity in the mantle and outer core is comparable in the upper and midmantle the well resolved cells lie beneath eurasia and a narrow zone surrounding the mantle beneath the pacific basin in the lowest mantle the resolution decreases significantly an examination of the averaging kernels associated with six locations near the base of the mantle reveals the significant lateral and vertical averaging inherent in estimates of compressional velocity in well sampled regions of the outer core we are able to resolve compressional velocity variations in our 6 6 cells however velocity variations in the inner core are poorly constrained at the scale of our blocks in well sampled regions of the mantle and outer core model parameter standard deviations remain below 0 25 for much of the inner core the standard deviations are quite large exceeding 0 5 narrow high velocity anomalies are imaged in the upper mantle associated with subduction zones in a number of locations such as beneath the americas these features extend well into the lower mantle in the outer core heterogeneity is generally lower in magnitude of the order of 0 5 the most notable feature in the outer core is a systematic shift to slightly higher velocity in addition we find a roughly symmetric distribution of heterogeneity at the base of the outer core compressional velocities are generally higher in the equatorial regions and lower at the poles

global earth structure inference and assessment summary a suite of compressional and shear phase arrival times p s pp pcp ss scs pkpab pkpbc pkpdf sksac and two sets of differential times ss s410s ss s660s are used to infer lateral variations in p and s velocity structure in the entire earth crust mantle and core volumetric heterogeneity is parametrized by 22 depth layers each of which is subdivided into a grid of cells in addition to volumetric hetero geneity we determine topography on the major internal velocity discontinuities station corrections event relocation parameters and inner core anisotropy a total of 96 300 unknowns the model parameters are estimated using an iterative lanczos algorithm to obtain a partial singular value decomposition a total of 5000 lanczos values and vectors are used to construct model parameter estimates as well as measures of model parameter resolution and covariance the lanczos resolution estimates provide lower bounds on conventional svd based measures throughout most of the mantle we find that regions beneath the continents particularly in the northern hemisphere are well resolved with the exception of africa velocity variations are moderately well resolved in that portion of the outer core lying beneath the continents velocity heterogeneity is poorly resolved in the inner core where cell dimensions are small and deviations in velocity heterogeneity trade off with variations in anisotropy variations in the uppermost mantle 2 3 per cent are correlated with surface tectonics while at greater depths high velocity variations coincide with regions of past and present subduction the high velocity anomalies extend into the lower mantle although with a reduced amplitude 0 5 1 0 per cent until the lowest mantle 2 5 per cent at the base of the outer core a large scale pattern of heterogeneity 0 8 per cent is observed slower at the poles in the inner core we infer a peak anisotropy of 2 3 per cent which varies laterally and with depth however the magnitude and distribution of the anisotropy trades off strongly with velocity heterogeneity

reply to comment on mantle layering from scs reverberations 2 the transition zone by justin revenaugh and thomas h jordan

the upper mantle discontinuities correlated or anticorrelated the discontinuities in the earth s upper mantle at 410km and 660km are frequently considered as phase changes which are exothermic and endothermic respectively from this follows that at laterally changing temperatures both discontinuities move in opposing vertical directions that means they are negatively correlated we attempt to test this hypothesis using travel times of seismic waves converted at both discontinuities underneath seismic stations the broadband stations used are located in areas of high e g western us and low heat flow e g central asia sclater et al 1980 we observe a clear positive correlation of the conversion times of both discontinuities which can however be explained with known lateral velocity changes above 410km from the scatter of our data we conclude that the limit of a possibly existing and negatively correlated topography of the two discontinuities is about 28km this is in contrast to recently claimed observations of about 35 km anticorrelated topography in the western pacific revenaugh jordan 1991 stammler kind 1992

the three dimensional shear wave structure in the mantle by overtone waveform inversion i radial seismogram inversion summary the three dimensional 3 d shear wave structure of the mantle down to the depth of about 900 km is obtained by inverting waveforms of radial component seismograms radial component seismograms contain large amplitude overtone signals which circle the earth as wave packets and are sometimes called x1 x2 x3 we use data which contain r1 x1 and x2 and filtered between 2 and 10mhz it is shown that unless each seismogram is weighted all seismograms are not fitted uniformly only data from large earthquakes are fitted and the final velocity anomalies are biased by the small number of large earthquake data resolution is good at shallow depths becomes worse in the intermediate depth range between about 400 and 500 km and then becomes better at greater depth ranges 600 900km even though we use only spheroidal mode data velocity anomalies in the shallow structure show excellent correlation with the age of the surface rocks of the earth in the deeper regions between about 600 and 900km south america shows a fast velocity anomaly which may indicate the slab penetration beyond 700 km there another region which shows a fast velocity anomaly is the mariana trench but other subduction regions do not show such features

receiver function imaging of upper mantle complexity beneath the pacific northwest united states abstract small scale topographic variations on the upper mantle seismic discontinuities provide important constraints on the thermal influences of upwellings and downwellings in geodynamically complex regions subduction of the juan de fuca plate and other tectonic processes dominating the pacific northwest united states in the cenozoic involve massive thermal flux that likely result in an upper mantle that has strong 3 d temperature variations we address the interaction of such processes in the region using receiver functions to image the upper mantle seismic discontinuities at 410 and 660 km we utilized over 15 000 high quality receiver functions gathered from 294 teleseismic earthquakes recorded at 277 regional broadband seismic stations primarily those of the earthscope usarray transportable array we find the average depths of the discontinuities to be 412 km and 658 km respectively with no obvious 520 km discontinuity detected the peak to peak range is greater on the 410 than the 660 suggesting the possibility of more significant regional dynamic processes at upper mantle depths our results are not consistent with a mantle plume below central oregon in the high lava plains region our observation of a thinner transition zone beneath the western snake river plain region however is consistent with a regional increase in mantle temperatures perhaps due to either asthenospheric flow from beneath and around the southern edge of the juan de fuca plate or to vertical flow in the form of regional mantle upwelling related to the snake river plain yellowstone hotspot track further our results are not consistent with a simple subducting juan de fuca slab morphology but rather suggest similar levels of significant complexity in slab structure found by recent regional tomographic studies we find evidence for a thickened and therefore cooler mantle transition zone beneath the wallowa idaho batholith region consistent with tomographic models which suggest broad scale increased seismic velocities to transition zone depths we speculate that this region may be the location of mantle downwelling at larger scales than previously proposed