Joint bulk-sound and shear tomography for western Pacific subduction zones. Earth Planet Sci Lett 210

Detailed regional body wave tomographic inversion of the Western Pacific region has been performed using P and S travel times from common sources and receivers, with a joint inversion in terms of bulk-sound and shear wave-speed variations in the mantle. This technique allows the separation of the in...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: A. Gorbatov, B. L. N. Kennett
Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2002
Subjects:
Online Access:http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.499.4228
http://rses.anu.edu.au/~brian/PDF-reprints/2003/epsl.210.527.pdf
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Summary:Detailed regional body wave tomographic inversion of the Western Pacific region has been performed using P and S travel times from common sources and receivers, with a joint inversion in terms of bulk-sound and shear wave-speed variations in the mantle. This technique allows the separation of the influence of bulk and shear moduli, and hence a more direct comparison with mineral physics information. The study region is parameterized with cells of side 0.5 ‡ to 2 ‡ and 19 layers to a depth of 1500 km, while the rest of the mantle was parameterized with 5U5 ‡ cells with 16 layers between the surface and the core^mantle boundary. A simultaneous inversion is made for regional and global structures to minimize the influence of surrounding structures on the regional image. A nested iterative inversion scheme is employed with local linearization and three-dimensional ray tracing through the successive model updates. The results of the regional tomographic inversion reveal the penetration of a subducted slab below the 660 km discontinuity at the Kurile^Kamchatka trench, while flattening of slabs above this depth is observed in the Japan and Izu^Bonin subduction zones on both the bulk-sound and shear wave-speed images. The penetration of a subducted slab down to a depth of at least 1200 km is seen below the southern part of the Bonin trench, Mariana, Philippine, and Java subduction zones. Fast shear wave-speed perturbations associated with the subducted slabs, down to the 410 km transition zone, are larger than the comparable bulk-sound perturbations for all these subduction zones except the