backazimuthal variations of splitting parameters of teleseismic sks phases observed at the broadband stations in germany sks phases observed at broadband stations in germany show significant shear wave splitting we have analyzed sks and skks phases for shear wave splitting from 13 stations of the german regional seismic network grsn from 3 three component stations of the grafenberg array grf and from one austrian station sqta the data reveal strong differences in the splitting parameters fast direction and delay time t from a single event at various stations as well as variations at the individual stations for events with different backazimuths the backazimuthal variations of the splitting parameters at some stations can be explained by two layer anisotropy models with horizontal symmetry axes the best resolved two layer model is the gra1 model upper layer 40 t 1 15s lower layer 115 t 1 95s the upper layer can be attributed to the lithosphere because of the magnitude of the delay time of the upper layer the lower layer must lie within the asthenosphere at other stations splitting parameters are consistent with an anisotropic one layer model for the upper mantle stations near the bohemian massif show fast directions near ew throughout ne germany the directions are oriented nw se the reason for this direction is probably the nearby tornquist teisseyre line the observed fast axes are subparallel to this prominent transeuropean suture zone at stations in southern germany near the alps we observed ene wsw directions below some stations we also found indications of inclined anisotropic layers

sea ice leads in the arctic ocean model assessment interannual variability and trends sea ice leads in the arctic are important features that give rise to strong localized atmospheric heating they provide the opportunity for vigorous biological primary production and predicting leads may be of relevance for arctic shipping it is commonly believed that traditional sea ice models that employ elastic viscous plastic evp rheologies are not capable of properly simulating sea ice deformation including lead formation and thus new formulations for sea ice rheologies have been suggested here we show that classical sea ice models have skill in simulating the spatial and temporal variation of lead area fraction in the arctic when horizontal resolution is increased here 4 5 km in the arctic and when numerical convergence in sea ice solvers is considered which is frequently neglected the model results are consistent with satellite remote sensing data and discussed in terms of variability and trends of arctic sea ice leads it is found for example that wintertime lead area fraction during the last three decades has not undergone significant trends

a sea ice lead detection algorithm for use with high resolution airborne visible imagery the detection of leads or cracks in sea ice is critical for the derivation of sea ice freeboard from altimetric measurements of sea ice elevation we present an approach for lead detection in sea ice using high resolution visible imagery from airborne platforms we develop a new algorithm i e the sea ice lead detection algorithm using minimal signal sildams that detects clouds extracts leads and classifies ice types within leads from airborne visible imagery cloud detection is based on an assessment of local variances of pixel brightness across image scenes and where available coincident altimetric measurements are used to confirm suspected cloudy scenes the lead extraction step computes affine time frequency distributions minimal signal for the red green and blue channels of each image the transformed outputs are combined to take advantage of three channels simultaneously finally lead pixel geolocations are extracted using a set of uniform thresholds for ice typing including open water thin ice and gray ice within leads along each flight line sildams was tested using data from the digital mapping system dms dms digital photographs represent the highest resolution 10 cm visible imagery available over sea ice and were collected during nasa operation icebridge sea ice flights in the antarctic and the arctic in 2009 and 2010 respectively we demonstrate that sildams has a high lead detection capability of 99

barents sea seasonal ice zone features and processes from ers 1 synthetic aperture radar seasonal ice zone experiment 1992 sea ice features and processes in the barents sea were studied during the seasonal ice zone experiment 1992 sizex92 a dedicated ers 1 satellite synthetic aperture radar sar field campaign carried out in march 1992 sizex92 was based around the research vessels polarsyssel and hakon mosby in situ oceanographic meteorological and ice measurements were made coordinated with low altitude aerial observations and ers 1 sar data acquired in near real time fifty eight low and full resolution sar scenes were obtained during sizex92 which provided a validation data set for ers 1 sar backscatter under winter conditions in the barents sea analysis of sizex92 data has provided geophysical insights including a better understanding of barents sea ice edge freezing processes and ice edge development in response to atmospheric forcings in particular areas of new ice formation were found to be related to bathymetric features through their influence on the circulation of arctic and atlantic water masses ers 1 sar image sequences revealed rapid mesoscale variations in new ice areas and the ice edge in response to wind conditions in addition to geophysical insight sizex92 demonstrated some of the technical capabilities and limitations of ers 1 sar to identify new ice areas the ice edge ice floes and ice types mapping new ice areas using satellite sar data may be considered the most promising new application the limitations of ers 1 sar derived ice classification and ice motion estimates in the marginal ice zone are identified

subcrustal lithosphere around the saxothuringian moldanubian suture zone a model derived from anisotropy of seismic wave velocities abstract we have modelled the thickness and large scale fabric of the subcrustal lithosphere from the variations of p wave delay times and the shear wave splitting observed at seismological observatories and four mobile stations in central europe the saxothuringian s lithosphere is characterized by a total thickness of 90 120 km and by a coherent fabric in its mantle part with olivine a c foliation planes dipping to the north northwest the moldanubian m lithosphere is generally thicker 120 140 km on the average and characterized by a c foliations dipping to the south the divergently dipping anisotropic structures may represent remnants of successive paleosubductions of the ancient oceanic lithosphere frozen in the subcrustal lithosphere of both units a long time before their variscan collision the deep s m contact is marked by a lithosphere thinning to about 80 90 km beneath the s m surface boundary within the subcrustal lithosphere a complex structure of the transition of both units extends to about 150 km toward the south as indicated by the anisotropic characteristics of body waves

analyzing lead information from sar images leads are relatively linear features in the sea ice cover which are composed of open water or new thin ice because of their composition leads impact the ocean air heat exchange automated analysis of leads from sea ice imagery may provide a means of gathering important information about the sea ice cover and its climatic influence this paper describes 1 a method for extracting and analyzing leads from ers 1 synthetic aperture radar sar images classified by ice type and 2 the results of using this method on images of the beaufort sea the methodology consists of identifying potential lead features in the image and measuring their characteristics both before and after using a thinning or skeletonization technique on the features the measurements obtained using this method include lead area average width number of leads in an area amount of branching and linearity of the lead these measurements were analyzed with respect to the time of year and the latitude of the images results indicate that the measurements produced by the methodology are consistent with lead measurement distributions that others have found the results of the study suggest that the methodology is appropriate to study lead characteristics on a large scale

shear wave splitting and subcontinental mantle deformation splitting observations are interpreted in terms of the strain induced lattice preferred orientation of mantle minerals especially olivine we consider three hypotheses concerning the origin of the continental anlsotropy 1 strain associated with absolute plate motion as in the oceanic upper mantle 2 crustal stress and 3 the past and present internal deformation of the subcontinental upper mantle by tectonic episodes it is found that the last hypothesis is the most successful namely that the most recent significant episode of internal deformation appears to be the best predictor of q for stable continental regions this is interpreted as fossil anisotropy whereas for presently active regions such as alaska the anisotropy reflects present day tectonic activity in the stable portion of north america there is a good correlation between delay time and lithospheric thickness this is consistent with the anisotropy being localized in the subcontinental lithosphere and suggests that intrinsic anisotropy is approximately constant the acceptance of this hypothesis has several implications for subcontinental mantle deformation first it argues for coherent deformation of the continental lithosphere crust and mantle during orogenies this implies that the anisotropic portion of the lithosphere was present since the deformational episode and rules out the addition of undeformed material to this layer by subsequent underplating or conductive growth of the thermal boundary layer one of the most important issues in the study of orogenies is the need to reconcile the formation of thickened lithosphere with the paradoxically high mantle temperatures often associated with orogenic episodes most efforts to date have focussed on modes of deformation whereby the cold lithospheric mantle is removed by convective instability or delamination and replaced by warm asthenosphere these models however are incompatible with the evidence for preserved coherent lithospheric deformation rather the deformed mantle appears to have been heated in place we suggest that the elevated mantle temperatures may be due to the strain heating accompanying the deformation

seismic source modeling seismic source modeling is taken to mean the modeling of seismograms to investigate kinematic properties of the earthquake source current trends such as the use of other data types e g geodetic measurements of coseismic deformation and the explicit consideration of source dynamics when modeling seismograms are beginning to blur this definition but i will adhere to it in this review i have divided seismic source modeling into teleseismic regional and near source modeling teleseismic modeling has the advantage of global coverage for earthquakes of magnitude 5 5 and larger but does not provide much more than point source parameters regional distance modeling has the advantage of a more rapid assessment of earthquake source properties but is complicated by relatively complex wave propagation the coverage is also limited to areas of broadband regional networks typically continental areas of developed countries near source modeling has the potential for detailed imaging of source properties but very few earthquakes occur in regions with sufficient instrumentation to allow this i have also included a section on historical earthquakes because of the additional issues that seismologists face in working with pre wwssn data and because of the important issues such as earthquake recurrence that require historical data in addition to reviewing the progress in seismic source modeling during the last four years i have also briefly reviewed some of the progress in understanding earthquake physics and hazards that has come about because of basic research in earthquake source modeling

models of seismic anisotropy in the deep continental lithosphere seismological observations sks wave polarizations systematic p residual variations azimuthal dependence of pn and surface wave velocities or a dispersion of surface waves are not consistent with isotropic if laterally heterogeneous upper mantle structure therefore an anisotropy should be considered as an a priori aspect of future large scale studies of mantle structure most studies of anisotropy however have assumed horizontal or vertical axes of symmetry but such orientations cannot explain bipolar patterns of spatial variations of p residuals which we have observed at many seismological stations on the basis of the petrophysical properties of real upper mantle rocks we consider anisotropy formed either by hexagonal or by orthorhombic aggregates composed of olivine orthopyroxene and clinopyroxene rotations of the aggregates about vertical and horizontal axes allow us to find the three dimensional orientations of symmetry axes that fit combinations of both p and s seismological observations in central europe and in western north america the orientations with plunging symmetry axes velocity extremes seem to be consistent across large spatially uniform tectonic units and change abruptly at important suture zones

mantle deformation and tectonics constraints from seismic anisotropy in the western united states abstract we have examined shear wave splitting in teleseismic shear waves sks skks s from 15 stations in the western united states based on analysis of 123 records from 67 events the varied past and present tectonic styles in this region subduction transform faulting extension and stable domains are expected to cause a wide variety of anisotropic behavior and therefore make it an excellent natural laboratory fast polarization azimuths vary from e w to nearly n s and time delays t range from being barely detectable less than 0 6 s to 1 6 s most stations yielded consistent measurements independent of station event geometry the exceptions were stations situated very close to the san andreas fault which yielded well constrained but inconsistent splitting parameters these have been successfully modeled by two anisotropic layers with different horizontal symmetry axes the upper layer has a fast direction parallel to the fault and t of about 1 s the lower layer with t from 0 6 to 0 9 s is oriented e w near the san francisco bay area and ne sw in the mojave desert other measurements of e w fast are observed as far east as western nevada with large delay times of 1 3 1 5 s but disappear to the north stations in the northwestern basin and range have values of oriented at about 70 with delay times ranging from 0 7 to 1 2 s varies in other regions of the basin and range from 70 in eastern nevada to 20 in the transition zone between the colorado plateau and the basin and range with t of 1 0 s measurements are geographically coherent and in many cases changes correspond to geologic or tectonic boundaries the e w fast feature extends across several tectonic provinces but disappears near the southern boundary of the gorda plate and may therefore be related to the dynamics of plate interactions regional variations in the fast directions of anisotropy within the basin and range suggest that the present extension has not been strong enough to align the fast directions over a great depth extent fast polarization directions within the transition zone between the basin and range and colorado plateau are nearly parallel to the geologic and geophysical boundaries between the two regions and to other geophysical boundaries the size of the delay times suggests that in many of the areas studied either the mantle is almost twice as anisotropic as we estimate or the anisotropy and therefore mantle deformation extends into the sublithospheric mantle we used the two layer method to examine the effect of a postulated lower layer with fast direction parallel to the absolute motion of the north american plate and found the best estimate of contribution from a uniform layer is 0 1 s of t although a contribution of up to 0 7 s cannot be ruled out a value as low as 0 1 s suggests either that olivine is not strongly aligned in a horizontal direction in this layer or that the layer thickness is of the order of 10 km

multifrequency polarimetric synthetic aperture radar observations of sea ice the first known fully polarimetric airborne synthetic aperture radar sar data set of sea ice is introduced images were acquired in the beaufort bering and chukchi seas in march 1988 during a campaign for validation of defense meteorological satellite program special sensor microwave imager radiometer ice products statistics of the magnitude phase and polarization of complex backscattered signals recorded by the jet propulsion laboratory three frequency sar are examined in detail for various scenes with different ice characteristics the full stokes matrix information generated from c l and p band data characterize the scattering behavior of different ice types polarization ratios and phase differences between linear copolarized returns are used for discrimination between particular image features and mechanisms are suggested for the observed polarimetric characteristics results indicate that combinations of frequency and polarization enhance current capability to distinguish ice of different properties using single frequency fixed polarization micro wave radar a specific example is the polarimetric identification of new ice formation which may not be easily distinguished in ers 1 5 3ghz vv polarization sar data such findings are consistent with theoretical model simulations of scattering characteristics of sea ice overall these preliminary results demonstrate that radar polarimetry will likely add a new dimension to our current capability for extracting geophysically important ice variables using radar remote sensing methods

p wave crustal structure of the lake vanern area sweden eugeno s profile 6 abstract to investigate the deep structure of the precambrian basement airgun shots in lake vanern southern sweden were recorded on land by two 100 km lines of mars stations to the south two geostore stations east and west of the lake and a 7 km multichannel reflection array on the varmlandsnas in the centre of the lake modelling of two profiles running roughly n s parallel to the major tectonic grain and on either side of the mylonite zone shows variation in crustal seismic velocity structure from east to west comparison of these models with near vertical incidence stacked sections from the varmlandsnas experiment and with an e w profile suggests continuity of reflecting structures in a n s direction this e w profile shows shallowly west dipping strongly reflective structures probably associated with the mylonite zone and also a small scale moho structure tentatively interpreted as the western limit of a wedge of overriden older precambrian crust

a random discontinuous model of sea ice motion the rate at which the sea ice pack spreads apart exposing the warm ocean to the cold atmosphere controls the air sea heat exchange in the arctic and the production of ice mass the rate of spreading or opening can be estimated from observations of ice motion using a model of the ice pack which accounts for the random manner in which the ice is broken into rigid pieces in a region intersected by many cracks some cracks will typically be opening while others are closing in this case the total of the openings will exceed the average divergence of the region a few measurements of the ice motion cannot resolve the openings at each crack so that any estimate of opening will be accompanied by estimation errors the random model adopted here imagines the leads to be distributed according to the poisson distribution and the relative displacements at any crack to be gaussian under these assumptions it is determined how the total opening is related to the average deformation and how this relationship depends on the size of the region and on the number of points used to determine the average deformation

seismic anisotropy and velocity variations in the mantle beneath the saxothuringicum moldanubicum contact in central europe we report on results of a passive seismic experiment undertaken to study the 3 d velocity structure and anisotropy of the upper mantle around the contact zone of the saxothuringicum and moldanubicum in the western margin of the bohemian massif in central europe spatial variations of p wave velocities and lateral variations of the particle motion of split shear waves over the region monitor changes of structure and anisotropy within the deep lithosphere and the asthenosphere a joint interpretation of p residual spheres and shear wave splitting results in an anisotropic model of the lithosphere with high velocities plunging divergently from the contact of both tectonic units lateral variations of the mean residuals are related to a southward thickening of the lithosphere beneath the moldanubicum

a tomographic study of the lithosphere beneath the pyrenees from local and teleseismic data a tomographic image of the pyrenean lithosphere from the surface down to 200 km is deduced from the propagation of the seismic waves recorded at the regional pyrenean seismograph network crustal and subcrustal models are derived independently from the inversion of two different data sets p and s velocity models for the crust are obtained from the propagation of local earthquakes the upper crust appears very heterogeneous and exhibits sharp velocity contrasts in the uppermost 7 km an east west trending zone with velocities up to 6 higher than the surrounding material is observed all along the pyrenees this zone coincides in most places with the exposure of the paleozoic rocks of the axial zone low velocities are observed on both sides of this high velocity zone at the surface they coincide with well known sedimentary basins but dip down to about 11 km depth toward the axis of the range in the central and eastern pyrenees two large high velocity bodies stand out in the north pyrenean zone and extend down to the base of the upper crust they coincide with large positive gravity anomalies and are interpreted as lower crust or upper mantle blocks uplifted into the upper crust the lower crust is poorly resolved but appears to be less heterogeneous than the upper crust moreover the lower crustal structure is almost uncorrelated with the upper crustal structure the major feature of the lower crust is a low velocity anomaly which stretches along the north pyrenean fault in the western pyrenees and beneath the axial zone in the central pyrenees its location nearly coincides with the distribution of the seismicity in the upper mantle p models are derived from the travel times of the remote events recorded at the pyrenean stations the most important feature is the presence in the eastern and central pyrenees of a vertical low velocity heterogeneity south of the north pyrenean fault down to 80 100 km this structure exhibits a 2 velocity contrast with respect to the surrounding structures and is interpreted as lower crustal material subducted during the pyrenean convergence this heterogeneity is not observed in the western pyrenees suggesting that the crustal shortening has been completely accommodated by several thrusts in the thinned aquitaine crust

contrasts in sea ice deformation and production in the arctic seasonal and perennial ice zones 1 four years 1997 2000 of radarsat geophysical processor system rgps data are used to contrast the sea ice deformation and production regionally and in the seasonal siz and perennial piz ice zones ice production is of seasonal ice in openings during the winter three day estimates of these quantities are provided within lagrangian elements initially 10 km on a side a distinct seasonal cycle is seen in both zones with these estimates highest in the late fall and with seasonal minimums in the midwinter regional divergence over the winter could be up to 30 spatially the highest deformation is seen in the siz north of coastal alaska both ice deformation and production are higher in the siz deformation related ice production in the siz 0 5 m is 1 5 2 3 times that of the piz 0 3 m this is connected to ice strength and thickness atmospheric forcing and boundary layer structure contribute to only the seasonal and interannual variability seasonal ice growth in ice fractures accounts for 25 40 of the total ice production of the arctic ocean uncertainties in these estimates are discussed by itself this deformation ice production relationship could be considered a negative feedback when thickness is perturbed however the overall effect on ice production in the face of increasing seasonal and thinner weaker ice coverage could be modified by local destabilization of the water column promoting overturning of warmer water due to increased brine rejection and the upwelling of the pynocline associated with increased occurrence of large shear motion in sea ice divergence is shown to be negligibly correlated to cyclonic motion in summer and winter in both ice zones

moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory global seismicity 2001 abstract moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory are listed for 290 moderate to large size earthquakes that occurred during 2001

kinematics of a major fan like structure in the eastern part of the sveconorwegian orogen baltic shield south central sweden abstract the n s trending so called protogine zone in the baltic shield of south central sweden is usually considered to mark a tectonic boundary between the rocks of the transscandinavian igneous belt tib in the east and the sveconorwegian orogen in the west detailed structural mapping in the karlskoga kristinehamn area has shown that an anastomosing network of ductile deformation zones with generally n s strike extends ca 40 km east of the traditional protogine zone furthermore the western boundary of this ductile deformation and the tib is not constrained in the kristinehamn area reconnaissance studies indicate that they both extend westwards towards the so called mylonite zone it is suggested that the eastern limit of the sveconorwegian orogen is located some 40 km east of the present boundary and that the protogine zone concept is obsolete the term sveconorwegian frontal deformation zone sfdz is proposed as a more appropriate alternative in southern sweden south of lake vattern and to correspond to a younger set of oblique ductile deformation zones with reverse and right lateral components of movement in the easternmost part of the orogen farther to the north ductile deformation zones older than the sfdz in the karlskoga kristinehamn area display a fan like geometry in an e w cross section with steep westerly dips in the eastern part of the section vertical dips farther west and moderate easterly dips in the western part of the section kinematic analysis indicates that dip slip movements predominate with a consistent top to the east sense of movement across the entire fan like structure in their present orientation deformation zones are characterized by reverse movements in the eastern part and normal movements in the western part of the structure between kristinehamn and the mylonite zone the main foliation is gently dipping to subhorizontal indicating that the regional structure is strongly asymmetric and that the fan like structure occurs close to the foreland of the orogen deformation zones are spaced to semi penetrative in the eastern part of the fan like structure whereas the deformation is more or less penetrative and the tib rocks are transformed to orthogneisses west of kristinehamn this east to west increase in bulk strain is in accordance with an increase in syn deformational metamorphic grade across the structure younger ductile deformation zones belonging to the sfdz are responsible for a major change in orientation of the older deformation zones in the easternmost part of the structure the fan like structure is best explained by models involving the interference of two separate tectonic events deformation occurred after 1 57 ga and prior to deposition of neoproterozoic and younger cover sedimentary rocks it is not yet clear whether the initial phase of deformation early sveconorwegian or older was related to the build up of an imbricate thrust stack in a compressional regime as favoured here or to regional e w extension the younger deformation phase was related to rotation of these older structures into the compressional late sveconorwegian sfdz

moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory global seismicity 1991 moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory are listed for 108 moderate to large size earthquakes occurring during 1991

pan arctic lead detection from modis thermal infrared imagery polynyas and leads are key elements of the wintertime arctic sea ice cover they play a crucial role in surface heat loss potential ice formation and consequently in the seasonal sea ice budget while polynyas are generally sufficiently large to be observed with passive microwave satellite sensors the monitoring of narrow leads requires the use of data at a higher spatial resolution we apply and evaluate different lead segmentation techniques based on sea ice surface temperatures as measured by the moderate resolution imaging spectroradiometer modis daily lead composite maps indicate the presence of cloud artifacts that arise from ambiguities in the segmentation process and shortcomings in the modis cloud mask a fuzzy cloud artifact filter is hence implemented to mitigate these effects and the associated potential misclassification of leads the filter is adjusted with reference data from thermal infrared image sequences and applied to daily modis data from january to april 2008 the daily lead product can be used to deduct the structure and dynamics of wintertime sea ice leads and to assess seasonal divergence patterns of the arctic ocean

shear wave splitting in the appalachians and the urals a case for multilayered anisotropy observations of shear wave splitting in the northeastern u s appalachians and in the foredeep of the urals vary significantly with the back azimuth and incidence angle of the incoming phase these variations suggest two or more layers within the upper mantle with different anisotropic properties synthetic seismograms for simple multilayered anisotropic structures show that shear wave splitting parameters tend to vary substantially with the direction of approach relying on a subset of back azimuth and incidence angle may strongly bias the model inferred especially if the observations are averaged on the other hand the azimuthal splitting pattern provides additional constraints on vertical or lateral variation of anisotropic properties in the earth using a new error estimation technique for splitting we find that individual measurements from broadband data have errors of the order of 3 7 for the fast direction and 0 1 0 2 s for the delay of split shear waves the azimuthal variation of splitting parameters is broadly consistent throughout the appalachian terranes in the northeast united states especially for two long running stations in the northeast united states hrv harvard massachusetts and pal palisades new york observations can be separated into two distinct populations with mean fast axis azimuths of n60 e 4 and n119 e 2 delay values within each population range from near zero to 1 s azimuthal splitting variation for aru arti russia in the foredeep of uralian mountains is characterized by sharp transitions between different groups of observations using synthetic seismograms in simple structures we develop one dimensional anisotropic models under stations hrv and aru the model for hrv includes two layers of anisotropic material under an isotropic crust with fast axis azimuths n53 e and n115 e for the bottom and the top layers respectively the model for the upper mantle under aru includes a layer with a fast axis at n50 e atop a layer with fast axis azimuth n90 e our modeling confirms the need for a layer of strong anisotropy with a slow axis of symmetry in the lower crust under aru reported by levin and park 1997a our results suggest that both urals and appalachians possess a relict anisotropy in the tectosphere associated with past continental collision and accretion underlain by anisotropy with orientation similar to the local absolute plate motion suggesting an asthenospheric component to the signal

the south scandinavian crust structural complexities from seismic reflection and refraction profiling abstract pioneering work on mapping the scandinavian crust commenced in the early 1960s and since then numerous profiling surveys have been undertaken particularly as part of the on going eugeno s project however the most significant contribution to mapping crustal structural details came from the m v mobil search cruises in the skagerrak and off the west coast of norway 16 s twt reflection profiling all past and present crustal profiling results have been integrated to produce detailed maps of moho depths and crustal thicknesses for south scandinavia the thinnest crust is found in the north sea and skagerrak approximately 20 km while east central sweden features very thick crust approximately 50 km other interesting features are the apparent correlation between crustal thinning and sedimentation subsidence magmatic activity earthquake occurrences and the tectonic age of the crust moho depths and the crustal thicknesses clearly reflect the tectonic evolution and the present structural features of the region investigated

evaluation of high resolution sea ice models on the basis of statistical and scaling properties of arctic sea ice drift and deformation sea ice drift and deformation from models are evaluated on the basis of statistical and scaling properties these properties are derived from two observation data sets the radarsat geophysical processor system rgps and buoy trajectories from the international arctic buoy program iabp two simulations obtained with the louvain la neuve ice model lim coupled to a high resolution ocean model and a simulation obtained with the los alamos sea ice model cice were analyzed model ice drift compares well with observations in terms of large scale velocity field and distributions of velocity fluctuations although a significant bias on the mean ice speed is noted on the other hand the statistical properties of ice deformation are not well simulated by the models 1 the distributions of strain rates are incorrect rgps distributions of strain rates are power law tailed i e exhibit wild randomness whereas models distributions remain in the gaussian attraction basin i e exhibit mild randomness 2 the models are unable to reproduce the spatial and temporal correlations of the deformation fields in the observations ice deformation follows spatial and temporal scaling laws that express the heterogeneity and the intermittency of deformation these relations do not appear in simulated ice deformation mean deformation in models is almost scale independent the statistical properties of ice deformation are a signature of the ice mechanical behavior the present work therefore suggests that the mechanical framework currently used by models is inappropriate a different modeling framework based on elastic interactions could improve the representation of the statistical and scaling properties of ice deformation

moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory global seismicity 1988 1989 moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory are listed for 201 moderate to large earthquakes occurring from 1988 to 1989

teleseismic p residual study in the iberian peninsula abstract teleseismic p wave residuals cleared of the effects of various source regions and deep mantle paths reflect the composition and structure of the lithosphere and asthenosphere beneath seismological stations we use a method with which we compute two components of the relative residuals for each station namely a directionally independent average and azimuth incidence angle dependent terms and also the ach 3 d inversion method the representative averages show consistent variations over the iberian peninsula with a relatively steep gradient in some areas the iberian massif and the betic cordillera these changes attain values around 1 s over a distance of about 200 km the lateral variations of these residual averages are transformed into a tentative model of the lithosphere thickness a thick lithosphere is observed beneath the iberian massif the pyrenees and beneath part of the betic cordillera waves from events at different teleseismic distances and various azimuths provide consistent residual patterns and a systematic directional dependence of the relative residuals especially at stations in the betic cordillera

the deep lithosphere in the alps a model inferred from p residuals abstract the tomographic studies of the alps and their surroundings based on the relative p residuals indicated two lithosphere roots attaining depths over 200 km separated by an upwelling of the lithosphere asthenosphere transition beneath the central part of this mountain range the directional dependence of relative p velocities indicates an anisotropic wave propagation in the subcrustal lithosphere beneath the alps and their surroundings the presented model of the deep lithosphere structure suggests several phases of the tectonic development of this region collision of a tip of the adriatic plate with europe in the eastern alps and dextral strike slip movement of the adriatic ending with underthrusting of europe beneath the western alps and counterclockwise rotation the latter contributes to a steep plunge of both plates beneath the eastern alps and to stress accumulation in the friuli region a model with delamination of the rigid upper crust and its rotation resolves some of the inconsistencies between the near surface and deep tectonics and also explains the distribution of seismicity

declassified high resolution visible imagery for arctic sea ice investigations an overview abstract since 2009 subsets of declassified satellite images of arctic sea ice have been released as literal image derived products lidps with one meter resolution for scientific use the collections include imagery acquired over six fixed locations in the arctic basin since 1999 targeted acquisitions over drifting ice parcels from 2009 on provide an added dimension to the lidp archive this mode of acquisition is especially useful for capturing time varying processes during the melt season in this paper we describe the characteristics of lidps the extent of the current archive and highlight their uses for arctic sea ice science at this writing the archive of lidps is still quite limited and thus this paper illustrates the potential utility of the imagery we provide an overview of the retrieval of five sea ice parameters that would benefit significantly from the surface details afforded by the higher resolution lidps they include melt pond coverage open water fraction ridge height floe size and openings and closings two other uses are suggested measurement of lateral melt and the interpretation of radar backscatter the intent is to motivate geophysical uses of the lidp and future acquisitions results here suggest that the effective observations of sea ice parameters and especially their changes require more focused sampling strategies to address specific spatial and temporal sampling needs presently acquisitions of this type of imagery at fixed locations and drifting sites are being continued and lidps are added to the archive as they are released

sea ice type maps from alaska synthetic aperture radar facility imagery an assessment synthetic aperture radar sar imagery received at the alaska sar facility is routinely and automatically classified on the geophysical processor system gps to create ice type maps we evaluated the wintertime performance of the gps classification algorithm by comparing ice type percentages from supervised classification with percentages from the algorithm the rms difference for multiyear ice is about 6 while the inconsistency in supervised classification is about 3 the algorithm separates first year from multiyear ice well although it sometimes fails to correctly classify new ice and open water owing to the wide distribution of backscatter for these classes our results imply a high degree of accuracy and consistency in the growing archive of multiyear and first year ice distribution maps these results have implications for heat and mass balance studies which are furthered by the ability to accurately characterize ice type distributions over a large part of the arctic

a study of azimuthal p residuals and shear wave splitting across the kunlun range northern tibetan plateau abstract the kunlun fault system is an east west transcurrent fault bordering the tibetan plateau that has experienced left lateral motion since 3 ma a linear array of one component and three component seismological stations was deployed across the kunlun range for 4 months p travel time residuals define three basic units along the profile the north kunlun unit the south kunlun unit and the bayan har unit p residuals are a function of azimuth p residuals are fast in the southern stations for southern azimuths and in the northern stations for northern azimuths measurements of shear wave splitting of the s scs and sks phases have been performed on deep events delay times and fast polarization directions have been computed by finding the maximum of the cross correlation between the two horizontal components rotated at different angles delay times from 0 40 s to 2 52 s remain in the range of those found by mcnamara et al 1994 j geophys res 99 13655 13665 at two sites along the same profile p residual travel times and the splitting of s waves are discussed in relation to models of the geological evolution of this region the northern tibetan plateau appears as a juxtaposition of different terranes the azimuthal p residual pattern implies that p wave anisotropy is about 3 in the lithosphere on both sides of the kunlun fault and that fast velocities are oriented outwards from the kunlun fault plane s wave splitting is observed far from the fault and implies that the lithosphere beneath northern tibet has undergone an important deformation

deep lithospheric structure across the central african shear zone in cameroon summary teleseismic p and pkp arrival times recorded by a network of 40 seismic stations deployed along a 300 km profile across the adamawa plateau at the northern end of the volcanic line in central cameroon provide constraints on lithospheric thickness and anisotropy within the subcrustal lithosphere these data indicate a thinned lithosphere beneath the central african shear zone where seismologically defined asthenosphere upwells from a depth of about 190 km to about 120 km in a relatively narrow belt thus it has only a low amplitude effect on the observed gravity anomalies the bouguer gravity high over the garoua rift is consistent with crustal thinning beneath it an abrupt change of the lithospheric thickness beneath the northern boundary fault correlates with both the topographic relief and a distinct change of the orientation of relatively high and low velocity directions which we infer to be due to anisotropy within the subcrustal lithosphere this fault may represent an important accretionary suture zone dividing lithospheric blocks that originated in different tectonic settings and acquired different frozen in anisotropy

the 1992 cape mendocino earthquake broadband determination of source parameters the april 25 1992 cape mendocino earthquake ms 7 1 has renewed speculation about the nature of subduction along the cascadia subduction zone and the associated seismic hazard this event may represent the first large m 6 thrust event along the entire cascadia subduction zone in historic times last 200 years we analyze long period surface waves and broadband body waves in order to estimate the mainshock source parameters we also examine broadband body waves from the nearby 1991 honeydew earthquake m 6 in order to assess the contributions of both rupture complexity and unmodeled source and receiver structure in the cape mendocino waveforms from both body and surface wave inversions as well as forward modeling of body waves we estimate a best double couple mechanism for the cape mendocino earthquake strike 330 10 dip 12 2 rake 75 15 seismic moment 1 93 1019 n m and mw 6 8 this mechanism contains a significant component of slip in the estimated direction of gorda north america plate convergence although this earthquake had suitable geometry for relieving strain accumulated by gorda north america plate convergence we cannot resolve whether it occurred on the interplate megathrust or on a fault within the overriding accretionary prism we find evidence for southwest offshore rupture toward an azimuth of 240 in addition we find evidence for early aftershocks in both the teleseismically recorded body waves and in locally recorded strong motions we model one aftershock delayed 13 s from the mainshock with a mechanism that is different from the mainshock mechanism but is consistent with the north south trending horizontal compression found offshore within the gorda plate we postulate that this aftershock and two additional large strike slip aftershocks that ruptured the gorda plate within 24 hours of the mainshock were caused by the transfer of stress accumulated across the cascadia subduction zone and accretionary prism far offshore to the gorda plate where it reduced the normal stress across nw se oriented faults triggering failure the complexity of fault interactions near the mendocino triple junction needs to be understood before potential seismic hazards of the southern cascadia subduction zone can be quantified

open water production in arctic sea ice satellite measurements and model parameterizations sequential synthetic aperture radar sar images from the ers 1 spacecraft were routinely used as input to the geophysical processor system at the alaska sar facility from 1992 through 1994 to produce sea ice displacement vectors on a 5 km grid we have combined some 5000 of these products consisting of nearly 700 000 displacement vectors into a set of 914 strips or mosaics of ice motion that span mostly 3 day intervals for each strip we compute the opening and closing of leads based on the change in area of the 5 km grid cells we also compute the area averaged deformation or strain invariants of the motion the small scale several kilometer lead activity can be parameterized fairly well in terms of the large scale several hundred kilometer strain invariants sea ice models implicitly contain such a parameterization through their constitutive equations the well known model of hibler 1979 that uses a viscous plastic rheology and an elliptical yield curve is in good agreement with our data the variance in the data about this theoretical relationship is less than that suggested by a random model of sea ice motion the data also indicate that shearing deformation contributes to the opening and closing of leads models with two categories or levels of ice thickness generally do not take shearing deformation into account in the evolution of the ice concentration nor do they redistribute ice as a result of ridging we show how to add these features to two level models however we argue that three level models consisting of open water thin ice and thick ice are much better suited to the proper treatment of open water production and we present such a model

ridging and strength in modeling the thickness distribution of arctic sea ice a theory describing evolution of the ice thickness distribution the probability density of ice thickness was proposed by thomdike et al 1975 and has been used in several sea ice models the advantage of this theory over the widely used two level formulation is that it treats ridging explicitly as a redistribution of ice thickness and ice strength as a function of energy losses incurred by ridge formation however the parameterization of these processes remains rather speculative and largely untested and so our purpose here is to explore these parameterizations using a numerical model based on this theory the model uses a 160 km resolution grid of the arctic and 7 years of observed atmospheric forcing data 1979 1985 monthly oceanic heat flux and current fields are obtained from a 40 km resolution coupled ice ocean model run separately with the same forcing by requiring the computed monthly mean ice drift to have the same magnitude as observed buoy drift we estimate the primary strength parameter the ratio of total to potential energy change during ridging this ratio depends on the value of other parameters however the standard case has a ratio of 17 which is within the range estimated by hopkins 1994 in simulations of individual ridging events the effects of ridge redistribution and shear ridging parameters are illustrated by a series of sensitivity studies and comparisons between observed and modeled ice thickness distributions and ridge statistics in addition these comparisons highlight the following shortcomings of the thickness distribution theory as it is presently implemented first the process of first year to multiyear ridge consolidation is ignored and second the observed preferential melt of thick ridged ice is not reproduced

joint interpretation of upper mantle anisotropy based on teleseismic p travel time delays and inversion of shear wave splitting parameters abstract we inverted shear wave splitting parameters and simultaneously analysed delays of teleseismic longitudinal waves to obtain a self consistent three dimensional 3 d image of the anisotropic upper mantle beneath the continents efficiency of the simultaneous 3 d analyses of p residual spheres and shear wave polarizations is demonstrated on data from two regions southern sweden and the western usa the anisotropic inferences of the subcrustal lithosphere are to a first approximation represented by homogeneous hexagonal or orthorhombic media with plunging symmetry axes

identification of sea ice types in spaceborne synthetic aperture radar data an approach for identification of sea ice types in spaceborne synthetic aperture radar sar image data is presented the unsupervised classification approach involves cluster analysis for segmentation of the image data followed by cluster labeling based on previously defined look up tables containing the expected backscatter signatures of different ice types measured by land based scatterometer the particular look up table used for labeling a segmented image is selected based on the seasonal and meteorological conditions at the time of data acquisition the extensive scatterometer observations and experience accumulated in field campaigns during the last 10 years were used to construct these look up tables these tables are expected to evolve as sea ice observations from the european ers 1 sar become available this paper presents the classification approach its expected performance the dependence of this performance on radar system performance and expected ice scattering characteristics results using both aircraft and simulated ers 1 sar data are presented the results are compared to limited field ice property measurements and coincident passive microwave imagery an algorithm based on this experimental approach has been implemented in the geophysical processor system at the alaska sar facility for classification of sea ice data in ers 1 c band sar data the importance of an integrated postlaunch program for validation and improvement of this approach is discussed

travel times and station corrections for p waves at teleseismic distances approximately 3300 shallow focus earthquakes and 1000 seismic stations have been used in a study of p wave travel times and station residuals including azimuthal effects the events were selected from a catalog containing 160 000 earthquakes and those having uniform distance and azimuthal coverage were systematically relocated and used to refine p wave travel times and station corrections station corrections are provided for 994 seismic stations the station corrections involve three terms the static effect and two cosine terms with appropriate phase shifts they exhibit general consistency over broad geographic areas and where coverage is dense often show abrupt changes from one geological province to another the cos 2 terms appear to be due to upper mantle anisotropy and they correlate with the stress direction in the crust

moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory global seismicity 1990 moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory are listed for 114 moderate to large size earthquakes occurring during 1990

sea ice motion tracking from sequential dual polarization radarsat 2 images a new sea ice motion tracking algorithm that operates with two sequential synthetic aperture radar sar radarsat 2 scansar images is presented the feature tracking approach is based on the combination of the phase correlation and cross correlation methods an algorithm for selecting control points a matching technique an approach for filtering out error vectors and a confidence levels setting for output drift vectors were specifically developed in order to increase the system s robustness and accuracy we evaluated ice motion tracking results derived from hh and hv channels of radarsat 2 scansar imagery and formulated a condition where the hv channel is more reliable than the hh channel for ice tracking furthermore we found that the ice motion tracking from the hv channel is not affected by noise floor stripes which are prominent in the cross polarization radarsat 2 scansar images the developed sea ice tracking technology was implemented at the canadian ice service environment canada for operational use the system was successfully run to provide operational support of field work in the arctic ocean in compliance with the united nations convention on the law of the sea in the spring of 2010

mountain building strike parallel motion and mantle anisotropy abstract geophysical and geological evidence indicates that tectonic movements parallel to the strike of orogenic belts and suture zones are the most important mode of displacement during continental collision and oblique subduction several hundred to a few thousand kilometers of displacement may have occurred this way resulting in a pervasive ductile deformation of the lithosphere consequently both crustal and mantle fabrics may reflect these movements and their study using both geological and geophysical methods could supply important clues to lithosphere behavior during mountain building on the basis of kinematic analysis of ductilely deformed crustal rocks in zones of movement a variety of tectonic models have been proposed which differ in 1 1 the timing of strike parallel motions early before or during continental accretion or late after accretion was completed 2 2 the geometric pattern of strike parallel displacement zones low angle or high angle and 3 3 the location of orogen parallel movement zones in outboard terranes on the subducting plate along the suture zone or within the continental hangingwall large scale displacements parallel to mountain belts also suggest that they occurred along lithospheric faults rooted in the upper mantle although few studies have been carried out from this view point thermal structural and petrological data support the conclusion that lithospheric faults involving the upper mantle may be discriminated from crustal faults rooted in some crustal decoupling zone where available data on mantle flow beneath orogenic belts are in agreement with mountain parallel displacements inferred from crustal studies this has an important bearing on the seismic anisotropy pattern which can be predicted in the lithospheric mantle below mountain belts the fast velocity direction which is parallel to the flow direction should therefore be recorded parallel to the strike of the belt

moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory global seismicity 1992 abstract moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory are listed for 133 moderate to large earthquakes occurring during 1992

an array study of lithospheric structure across the protogine zone varmland south central sweden signs of a paleocontinental collision abstract a small seismological array was installed on both sides of the protogine zone pz in varmland south central sweden to study the structure of the mantle lithosphere and lateral variations of its anisotropy no distinct isotropic velocity anomalies were detected by tomography in the upper mantle around the pz the observed velocity variations depending on the direction of propagation can be explained by anisotropy within the subcrustal lithosphere on both sides of the suture the best solution of a joint analysis of anisotropic inferences from teleseismic p residual spheres and an inversion of shear wave splitting parameters resulted in 3d self consistent anisotropic models of blocks of the subcrustal lithosphere the anisotropic structures within the lithosphere are approximated by hexagonal models k p 5 with low velocity symmetry axes the high velocity planes dip to the e in a region westward of the pz and to the nw eastward of the pz the pz can be interpreted as a steep and narrow suture cutting the whole lithosphere and separating the two anisotropic blocks of different origin

seismic anisotropy and mantle flow beneath the baikal rift zone seismic studies have shown that continental rifts such as lake baikal and the great rift valley of east africa are like mid ocean rifts in that they lie above broad regions of asthenospheric upvvarp of much greater extent than the surface expression of rifting1 4 the direction of mantle flow in such regions can be investigated using the seismic anisotropy created by flow induced orientation of mantle olivine crystals5 8 seismic studies of the mid atlantic ridge have revealed upwelling mantle flow beneath the ridge and flow normal to the ridge axis on either side8 10 here we present results from an array of seismic stations across the baikal rift zone in southern siberia the splitting in arrival times of sks seismic waves indicates that the upper mantle beneath the rift zone is anisotropic with the fast direction which reflects the direction of mantle flow being horizontal and normal to the rift axis this suggests that the broad upwarp associated with this continental rift is caused by similar mantle flow to that at mid ocean rifts this may help to elucidate the processes involved in continental rifting

very broadband seismic analysis of the 1992 flores indonesia earthquake mw 7 9 the december 12 1992 flores island earthquake m w 7 9 which caused a destructive tsunami is located in the back arc of the transition zone between the sunda and banda arcs a region in active collision with the australian continental margin we study the earthquake using four seismological techniques spanning a period range of 1 1000 s and infer that the flores event may be characterized as a shallow back arc thrust with fault plane strike 70 30 dip 28 10 and rake 80 to 140 linear trade off with strike a rupture consisting of three discrete pulses with a total duration of 70 s centroid time 26 3 s and an estimated moment release between 7 5x10 20 and 8 0x10 20 n m from the slip vector we infer that compressional forces play an important role in the deformation mechanism of the back arc north of flores island body waves constrain the hypocentral depth to be 16 km with rupture mainly propagating updip to shallow depth and bilaterally along strike with most subevents located toward the northeast evidence for rupture directivity from surface wave deconvolutions is inconclusive but the overall source function is consistent with body wave results our body wave finite fault model is in rough agreement with two models proposed to explain tsunami run up observations normal mode modeling of w phase observations at periods longer than 70 s shows that slow slip is negligible from this and the slip distribution determined from the body wave analysis we infer that the seismic source is an unlikely candidate to explain anomalously high tsunami run ups measured on northeastern flores island

moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory global seismicity 1993 abstract moment tensor solutions estimated using optimal filter theory are listed for 130 moderate to large size earthquakes occurring during 1993

no regional anisotropic domains in the northeastern u s appalachians a fabric frozen within the continental lithosphere should lead to regional anisotropic domains with close correlation between tectonics seismic anisotropy and shear wave travel time delays alternatively seismic anisotropy could be maintained by active deformation in the sub lithospheric mantle this scenario would predict broad spatial consistency in shear wave splitting and weak correlation between the splitting surface tectonics and travel time delays a coherent pattern of shear wave splitting is observed in the northeastern united states covering large parts of new york and new england spanning the appalachian orogen and areas underlain by the grenvillian basement the direction of fast shear wave propagation as measured from core refracted sks skks and pks phases varies systematically with event back azimuth at all sites examined and is fit well by two layers of anisotropy with subhorizontal symmetry axes relative travel time delays of shear waves that sample the region vary over 100 km length scale and correlate with surface geology tomographic images suggest lateral shear velocity variations 3 including a slow anomaly beneath the grenvillian basement exposed in the adirondack mountains there is little correlation between this horizontally rough seismic velocity and the horizontally smooth anisotropic model consistent with shear wave splitting we therefore conclude that in the northeastern us the concept of regional anisotropic domains i e distinct regions within the lithosphere characterized by coherent anisotropic properties reflective of present or past deformation does not apply

contributions of growth and deformation to monthly variability in sea ice thickness north of the coasts of greenland and the canadian arctic archipelago regional variability in monthly cryosat 2 sea ice thickness is partitioned into contributions from dynamics and thermodynamics using ice deformation calculated from large scale ice drift for five winters december to april 2011 2015 over a region of persistent convergence north of the coasts of greenland and the canadian arctic archipelago deformation explains 34 of the overall variance up to 69 in 2014 2015 in monthly thickness changes approximately 42 56 or 0 6 m of the seasonal changes in mean regional ice thickness can be attributed to divergence and shear the estimated area averaged growth of 0 12 0 03 m month compares favorably with measurements from ice mass balance buoys examination of the time variable thickness distributions shows areas covered by ice 3 m increased albeit at fairly coarse resolution this coupled analysis of thickness changes and deformation offered a first look at the character of the regional thickness redistribution process

a new modeling framework for sea ice mechanics based on elasto brittle rheology we present a new modeling framework for sea ice mechanics based on elasto brittle eb behavior the eb framework considers sea ice as a continuous elastic plate encountering progressive damage simulating the opening of cracks and leads as a result of long range elastic interactions the stress relaxation following a damage event can induce an avalanche of damage damage propagates in narrow linear features resulting in a very heterogeneous strain field idealized simulations of the arctic sea ice cover are analyzed in terms of ice strain rates and contrasted to observations and simulations performed with the classical viscous plastic vp rheology the statistical and scaling properties of ice strain rates are used as the evaluation metric we show that eb simulations give a good representation of the shear faulting mechanism that accommodates most sea ice deformation the distributions of strain rates and the scaling laws of ice deformation are well captured by the eb framework which is not the case for vp simulations these results suggest that the properties of ice deformation emerge from elasto brittle ice mechanical behavior and motivate the implementation of the eb framework in a global sea ice model

opening and closing of sea ice leads digital measurements from synthetic aperture radar the coming opportunity to extract quantitative sea ice data from routine synthetic aperture radar imagery requires the development of automated image processing techniques an algorithm is described for measuring the opening and the closing of leads by comparing two sequential synthetic aperture radar sar digital images the pair of images is classified into leads and ice correcting for variation in brightness with range displacements are determined automatically on a regular 2 km grid on a 100 km square scene by cross correlation an algorithm groups together cells which cover a lead event the lead area change is estimated for each cell group by counting lead pixels before and after deformation all positive changes are summed to obtain the amount of opening and all negative changes give closing errors are estimated by comparison with area changes determined from manually digitized lead boundaries and are about 0 2 of the area of the scene for comparison the measured opening and closing are in the range of 1 to 3 of the scene area in ice models the openings and closings of leads are parameterized in terms of the large scale deformation sar allows us to study these parametric relations by giving us access both to direct observations of opening and closing and to detailed kinematic data from which to estimate the mean deformation in this image pair for which the deformation is nearly pure shear we find relatively small amounts of opening and closing consistent with previous observations and with parameterizations in most models the large values of opening and closing predicted by the poisson gauss kinematic model are not in evidence

seismic anisotropy in the north eastern us as a source of significant teleseismic p traveltime anomalies summary observations of shear wave splitting in the north eastern us and southern canada provide evidence for seismic anisotropy in the lithosphere throughout most of the region s wave splitting times of the order of 1 s are found within the proterozoic grenville province and at a number of sites within the appalachian orogen as a notable exception seismic anisotropy is weak or absent in vermont and western new hampshire a transitional zone between proterozoic and palaeozoic terranes the fast direction is westerly 260 280 within the grenville province and north westerly 300 320 in the appalachians the effects of seismic anisotropy on the traveltimes of body waves are modelled in a horizontal layer characterized by an anisotropic elastic tensor of olivine simulations are made to study the influence of parameters such as the fraction of anisotropic material the angle between the tensor symmetry axis and the wave propagation direction and the type of crystallographic axis aligned in olivine grains results indicate that earth models with s wave splitting times of about 1 s should also have p traveltime anomalies positive or negative of the order of 0 2 0 3 s also alignment along either axis a or b can produce the combination of p delays between 0 25 and 0 75 s and s wave splitting times between 0 7 and 1 3 s observed in the adirondack mountains we conclude that velocity anomalies found in this region by earlier studies may in part be due to seismic anisotropy

seismic anisotropy in the eastern united states deep structure of a complex continental plate we have analyzed shear wave splitting recorded by portable and permanent broadband and long period stations located in the eastern united states teleseismic shear waves sks skks and pks were used to retrieve the splitting parameters the orientation of the fast wave polarization plane and the delay time t in total 120 seismic events were processed allowing for more than 600 splitting measurements within the appalachians stations located in the western external part are characterized by t 1s and trending n50 70 e in the south and central regions and n30 40 e in the north closely following the trend of the orogenic belt in these areas the transition region between north and central is characterized by t 1 1 3 s and by e w trending that are at a high angle to the regional geologic trend measurements at two stations located in the eastern internal part of the belt indicate very weak anisotropy the large scale pattern of anisotropy is not consistent with that predicted for simple asthenospheric flow beneath the plate splitting along the southern and eastern margins of the continent is consistent with that expected for grenvillian deformation an alternative model of asthenospheric flow around the cratonic keel cannot be ruled out within the cratonic core the correlation between t and lithospheric thickness suggests a lithospheric anisotropy smaller length scale variations also argue for a significant contribution of lithospheric structures the fabric responsible for shear wave splitting may have formed during tectonic episodes that affected the eastern united states i e the grenville and appalachian orogenies and the subsequent rifting of the north atlantic ocean our observations in the western appalachians suggest that the anisotropy may be preserved since the grenvillian orogeny the absence of detectable splitting in the two stations in the eastern appalachians is attributed to the igneous intrusions related to the atlantic rifting the measurements in the transition between the northern and central southern appalachians constitute an intriguing anomaly whose e w have little obvious relation to the regional surface geology we suggest two possible causes 1 the local dominance of asthenospheric flow motivated by the proximity of a pervasive low velocity anomaly and 2 lithospheric deformation in a transcontinental strike slip fault zone active during the appalachian collision

global patterns of azimuthal anisotropy and deformations in the continental mantle summary we present a summary of measurements of azimuthal anisotropy in the continental mantle based on the sks technique and performed mostly with the active participation of the authors the directions of polarization of the fast quasi shear wave and the time delays between the quasi shear waves are obtained at nearly 70 locations in all continents except antarctica these data are interpreted in terms of lattice preferred orientation of olivine which is caused by deformations in the mantle the depth interval responsible for anisotropy is unknown but the data suggest that it may reach at least 300 km the fast directions in sks do not show clear correlation with the fast directions of the teleseismic p at the same seismograph stations in the regions of present day convergence the fast direction of anisotropy usually aligns with the plate boundary this correlation implies that the direction of shortening is the same in the crust and the upper mantle in the regions of rifting the inferred direction of mantle flow usually aligns with the direction of extension in the crust outside the regions of recent tectonic activity we most likely observe a combined effect of frozen anisotropy in the subcrustal lithosphere and of recently formed anisotropy in the asthenosphere on a global scale in these regions there is a positive correlation between the absolute plate velocity directions and the fast directions of anisotropy the correlation is especially strong in central and eastern parts of north america a clear absence of any evidence of large scale azimuthal anisotropy in the data of long range refraction profiling for the upper 100 km of the mantle of that region implies that the effect in sks is generated mainly at greater depths in the asthenosphere orientation of olivine at these depths reflects recent and present day flow in the mantle rather than processes of a distant geologic past

extracting sea ice data from satellite sar imagery with the prospect of operational satellite sar s by the end of the decade there is a clear need to develop automated algorithms for the extraction of geophysical data about sea ice from highresolution radar imagery to this end we have developed techniques for distinguishing ice from open water and for resolving the details of deformation within areas 100 km square imaged by seasat sar the classification of ice and open water is based on the creation of a second band of image data consisting of the local variance of the original brightness the first band being a local average brightness in the space of these two variables ice and open water are separated into two distinct clusters the deformation is found on a 3 4 km mesh by local cross correlations of the brightness the strategy is to find a coarse displacement field with a highly averaged image and to proceed through a hierarchy of images with increasing resolution improving the accuracy of the displacements at each step comparison with manually determined displacement shows room for improvement in regions of high deformation by using smaller areas for cross correlation the concentration and deformation data are used together to determine localized regions of the scene where open water is produced or lost

anisotropic measurements in the rhinegraben area and the french massif central geodynamic implications as part of an integrated seismic study polarization of shear waves has been analyzed for teleseismic events recorded at a set of permanent broadband semi permanent long and short period and temporary short period seismological stations located in two geodynamically important areas in western europe namely the rhinegraben urach area and the french massif central volcanic field

3 d velocity structure beneath france in different frequency bands abstract the 3 d velocity structure beneath france is investigated by using a method based upon teleseismic waveform analysis and a block inversion technique in this method the p wave travel time is computed exactly in cach block for a spherical earth model and the p wave arrival times are obtained by cross correlating the waveforms observed in 26 stations of the ldg network one image is obtained directly from the observed signals the other two are obtained from low pass filtered waveforms with 0 5 and 0 25 hz cut off frequencies the results show that the 3 d velocity image depends weakly but significantly on the cut off frequency of the low pass filter in addition to possible changes in the signal to noise ratio this may indicate a dependence of the tomographic images on the seismic wavelength the best fit to the data is obtained from the 0 5 hz image the main features of this image are a clear indication of a lithospheric root beneath switzerland a general large scale w e variation of velocity within the lithosphere and a diffuse low velocity area beneath the french massif central and the western part of the alps in the 100 250 km layer

southern rhine graben small wavelength tomographic study and implications for the dynamic evolution of the graben summary inversion of p wave traveltime residuals of teleseismic events recorded by a dense network of short period stations yielded a detailed image of the 3 d velocity structure of the lithosphere asthenosphere system beneath the southern rhine graben area the upper part of the lithosphere marked by velocity anomalies orientated along the graben strike can be related to the development of the graben these upper 50 km display stronger lateral heterogeneities than the weak anomalies observed at deeper levels which show roughtly an e w orientation the teleseismic inversion models yield no indications for significantly reduced seismic velocities in the upper mantle as could be expected from an actively upwelling mantle diapir located beneath the southern rhine graben area the observation of generally weak velocity variations at greater depth indicates a rather smooth transition from the lower lithosphere to the upper asthenosphere deeper parts of the lithosphere were probably altered by metasomatic processes as a consequence of the intrusion of melts during middle and late miocene times these melts cooled and solidified from the end of the miocene when rifting and thermal doming ceased in the southern rhine graben area

the lithosphere asthenosphere system in fennoscandia abstract we present a summary of the available information on rayleigh wave dispersion data for the fennoscandian region the observations have been combined to produce regional dispersion relations which have then been subjected to the hedgehog inversion procedure the results are presented on a map outlining the thickness of the lid and the shear velocities in both the lid and the asthenosphere channel lid thickness up to around 135 km is found in the bothnia north central finland area with if any weak shear velocity contrast to the underlying layer the surrounding areas are characterized by lid thickness up to around 75 km a stronger low velocity zone to lid contrast may be found in the caledonian and baltic sea area 0 25 0 45 km s taking into account moho depth data and the aforementioned results a map of the lithosphere asthenosphere system was derived

seismic anisotropy beneath the continents probing the depths of geology seismic anisotropy beneath continents is analyzed from shear wave splitting recorded at more than 300 continental seismic stations anisotropy is found to be a ubiquitous property that is due to mantle deformation from past and present orogenic activity the observed coherence with crustal deformation implies that the mantle plays a major if not dominant role in orogenies no evidence is found for a continental asthenospheric decoupling zone suggesting that continents are coupled to general mantle circulation

the lithosphere in central europe seismological and petrological aspects abstract the lithosphere thickness in the variscan belt of central europe varies between about 60 and 150 km with typical values of 100 120 km our estimates derived from directionally independent representative p wave residuals are in good agreement with magnetotelluric determinations of a layer with increased conductivity in the upper mantle the large scale anisotropies of the subcrustal lithosphere beneath four seismological stations determined from spatial variations of relative p residuals vary between 6 5 and 15 2 for p velocities the s wave anisotropies determined from sks polarizations vary between 2 2 and 6 7 these values are in reasonable agreement with the anisotropies of peridotites determined in laboratory systematic spatial variations of the directional terms of relative residuals in dependence on azimuths and incidence angles suggest the existence of large dipping anisotropic structures in the subcrustal lithosphere the residual patterns at most stations in the saxothuringicum rhenohercynicum and in the massif central imply northwesterly orientated dips of the anisotropic structures while stations in the moldanubicum the alpine foredeep and most of the alps north of the insubric line suggest southeasterly orientated dips in our interpretation the dipping anisotropic structures may represent paleosubductions which retain olivine preferred orientations originating from an ancient oceanic lithosphere the variscides of central europe may thus represent a collision zone characterized by two systems of paleosubductions divergent relative to the suture between the moldanubicum and the saxothuringicum

centroid moment tensor solutions for july september 1993 abstract centroid moment tensor solutions are presented for 186 earthquakes that occurred during the third quarter of 1993 the solutions are obtained using corrections for aspherical earth structure represented by a whole mantle shear velocity model sh8 u4l8 of dziewonski and woodward

sea ice tracking by nested correlations spatial differences in sea ice displacement affect ice stress ice production and the mass balance of the ice cover our concepts about the spatial structure of this field have been undernourished because of a paucity of data with high spatial detail and because of the tedium of extracting such measurements from images manually a method is described that measures displacements from synthetic aperture radar digital imagery with fine spatial resolution and does so fully automatically many small areas of ice common to two images are identified by correlating the two images the strategy is to acquire a crude displacement field first from highly averaged images and to refine this field with images of successively higher resolution the median discrepancy between automatically and manually measured displacements is three pixels 0 075 km the algorithm operates successfully on compact ice with large floes and modest rotation rates we believe it will prove applicable to most of the arctic ice cover throughout the year