Imaging Rayleigh Wave Attenuation Beneath North America with USArray

Abstract:

The EarthScope USArray provides an opportunity to obtain detailed images of the continental upper mantle at an unprecedented scale. The majority of mantle models derived from USArray data to date contain spatial variations in seismic-wave speed; however, in many cases these data sets do not by themselves allow a non-unique interpretation. Joint interpretation of seismic attenuation and velocity models can improve upon the interpretations based only on velocity. Surface-wave amplitudes are sensitive to factors in addition to attenuation, including source excitation, focusing by elastic structure, and local site amplification. Because of the difficulty of isolating attenuation from these other factors, little is known about the attenuation structure of the North American upper mantle.

In this study, Rayleigh wave travel time and amplitude in the period range 25-100 s are measured using an interstation cross-correlation technique. We consider three different approaches for separating the effects of local site amplification and attenuation on the amplitude measurements. The attenuation values determined with these three approaches contain the same first-order features, which gives us confidence that these features are robust: high attenuation in the western U.S. and low attenuation in the central and eastern U.S., with slightly higher attenuation along the eastern seaboard. However, we also identify several areas where we suspect the imaged attenuation values reflect unmodelled focusing effects rather than anelastic attenuation. We therefore identify attenuation values that are likely contaminated by unmodelled focusing effects using the Laplacian of the phase-velocity map, eliminate those values, and generate 2-D attenuation maps through a regional average of the remaining values.

We also investigate the range of intrinsic shear-attenuation values that are suggested by the Rayleigh wave attenuation maps at periods between 40 and 80 s. This preliminary model is the first whole-continent attenuation model constructed from USArray data; we conclude that future improvements to this model will result from more accurate computation of focusing effects using simulations rather than the observed travel times.