Imaging mantle structures in the Mediterranean zone using geoid data

Abstract:

Source separation is a key issue of gravimetric data interpretation, because contributions from many sources - such as crustal signal, mantle mass distribution,... - are mixed together in the observed gravity field. Using geoid data in order to improve our understanding of the mantle structures consequently requires to separate the relevant contribution from other sources.

Ideally this process should use as little a priori information as possible. That could be performed by either some statistical analysis methods that separate the contributions based on a given definition of independence of sources or by subtracting the effect of a known source.

In the Mediterranean zone, we use a tomographic model for the 1000 first km of mantle. We isolate major features of this model to confront it to the geoid patterns in the area.