Verification of Long Period Surface Waves from Ambient Noise and Its Application in Constructing 3D Shear Wave Structure of Lithosphere in United States

Abstract:

In the past decade, ambient noise tomography (ANT) has become an estimated method to construct the earth’s interior structures thanks to its advantage in extracting surface waves from cross-correlations of ambient noise without using earthquake data. However, most of previous ambient noise tomography studies concentrate on short and intermediate periods (<50sec) due to the dominant energy of the microseism at these periods. Studies of long period surface waves from cross-correlation of ambient noise are limited.

In this study, we verify the accuracy of the long period (50-250sec) surface wave (Rayleigh wave) from ambient noise by comparing both dispersion curves and seismic waveforms from ambient noise with those from earthquake records quantitatively. After that, we calculate vertical-vertical cross-correlation functions among more than1800 USArray Transportable Array stations and extract high quality interstation phase velocity dispersion curves from them at 10-200 sec periods. Then, we adopt a finite frequency ambient noise tomography method based on Born approximation to obtain high resolution phase velocity maps using the obtained dispersion measurements at 10-150 sec periods. Afterward, we extract local dispersion curves from these dispersion maps and invert them for 1D shear wave velocity profiles at individual grids using a Bayesian Monte Carlo method. Finally, a 3D shear velocity model is constructed by assembling all the 1D Vs profiles. Our 3D model is overall similar to other models constructed using earthquake surface waves and body waves. In summary, we demonstrate that the long period surface waves can be extracted from ambient noise, and the long period dispersion measurements from ambient noise are as accurate as those from earthquake data and can be used to construct 3D lithospheric structure from surface down to lithosphere/asthenosphere depths.