Surface-Wave Imaging of the Juan de Fuca Plate and Cascadia Subduction Zone

Abstract:

The Juan de Fuca plate over the past four years has been the location of the onshore-offshore Cascadia Initiative (CI) array. These data present a rare opportunity to image the evolution of the crust and mantle of an entire plate from the ridge through the subduction zone. The Cascadia subduction zone is capable of up to a M9 megathrust earthquake; seismic imaging provides a major constraint on the thermal structure and hydration state of the plate, which in turn constrain models of seismogenesis. We utilize a multi-channel cross-correlation analysis to estimate the phase-velocity of Rayleigh waves traversing the CI from teleseismic earthquakes recorded over the first three years of the deployment, to image the structure of the Juan de Fuca plate and the Cascadia arc and forearc. Our initial results are dominated by the transition from high-velocity oceanic to low-velocity continental lithosphere across the margin, high velocities in the region of the subducting slab, and low velocities beneath the arc. All of these areas produce reasonable standard deviation in the velocity estimates. These images confirm the robustness of our methodology, despite the different noise characteristics of the onshore sites and the ocean bottom seismometers (OBS). Among the OBS sites there are additional differences between those deployed in deep water on oceanic crust and those in shallow water on the continental shelf. Compliance and tilt corrections have a significant effect at some stations and are taken into account accordingly. These results will be combined with recent results from offshore receiver functions and estimates of short-period Rayleigh wave dispersion from ambient noise to constrain the crust and mantle structure in a joint inversion.