High-resolution Adjoint Tomography of the Eastern Venezuelan Crust using Empirical Green’s Function Waveforms from Ambient Noise Interferometry

Abstract:

We present a high-resolution 3D crustal model of Eastern Venezuela from a full waveform inversion adjoint tomography technique, based on the spectral-element method. Empirical Green’s functions (EGFs) of Rayleigh waves from ambient noise interferometry serve as the observed waveforms. Rayleigh wave signals in the period range of 10 – 50 s were extracted by cross-correlations of 48 stations from both Venezuelan national seismic network and the BOLIVAR project array. The synthetic Green’s functions (SGFs) are calculated with an initial regional 3D shear wave model determined from ballistic Rayleigh wave tomography from earthquake records with periods longer than 20 s. The frequency-dependent traveltime time misfits between the SGFs and EGFs are minimized iteratively using adjoint tomography = to refine 3D crustal structure [Chen et al. 2014]. The final 3D model shows lateral shear wave velocity variations that are well correlated with the geological terranes within the continental interior. In particular, the final model reveals low velocities distributed along the axis of the Espino Graben, indicating that the graben has a substantially different crustal structure than the rest of the Eastern Venezuela Basin. We also observe high shear velocities in the lower crust beneath some of the subterranes of the Proterozoic-Archean Guayana Shield.