Ambient noise tomography reveals upper crustal structure of Icelandic rifts ...
The structure of oceanic spreading centres and subsurface melt distribution within newly formed crust is largely understood from marine seismic experiments. In Iceland, however, sub-aerial rift elevation allows both accurate surface mapping and the installation of large broadband seismic arrays. We...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Elsevier
2017
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/cam.9525 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/264166 |
| Summary: | The structure of oceanic spreading centres and subsurface melt distribution within newly formed crust is largely understood from marine seismic experiments. In Iceland, however, sub-aerial rift elevation allows both accurate surface mapping and the installation of large broadband seismic arrays. We present a study using ambient noise Rayleigh wave tomography to image the volcanic spreading centres across Iceland. Our high resolution model images a continuous band of low seismic velocities, parallelling all three segments of the branched rift in Iceland. The upper 10 km contains strong velocity variations, with shear wave velocities 0.5 km s$^{−1}$ faster in the older non-volcanically active regions compared to the active rifts. Slow velocities correlate very closely with geological surface mapping, with contours of the anomalies parallelling the edges of the neo-volcanic zones. The low-velocity band extends to the full 50 km width of the neo-volcanic zones, demonstrating a significant contrast with the ... |
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