The Mantle Seismic Heterogeneities Inferred by USArray Data

Abstract:

The detailed images of mantle seismic heterogeneities is establishing the link between modern mantle dynamics and past surface geological evolutions. The recent deployment of the USArray network of seismometers rolling from the west coast to the east coast of United States during 2004 to 2015 afford an extraordinary data set to investigate such mantle seismic heterogeneities. Here we first explored the D” structure beneath Caribbean region and found an east-to-west asymmetrical undulation of the D” discontinuity with a V-shaped depression of ~80-150 km over a lateral distance of 600 km, coinciding with a similar trend of shear wave velocity showing the most profound reduction of ~5% at the bottom of the thinnest D” layer. The strong correlation between the D” topography and velocity variations indicates lateral fluctuation in the D” temperature modulated by the reheated slab material has perturbed the phase transition boundary significantly and may reflect a transitional period of the proposed mega-plume scenario. Secondly, these emerging data not only shed light on the lowermost mantle structures but provide new constraints on the mid and upper mantle seismic velocity heterogeneities beneath the United States. We found that frequency-dependent traveltime residuals and amplitudes of S waves from South America events display considerable scatter patterns recorded by USArray stations which can be attributed to upper mantle heterogeneities beneath the U.S. and mid or lower mantle seismic anomalies along the raypaths. The analysis of waveform complexity is utilized in this work and gives complementary constraints on the location and geometry of these mantle heterogeneities such as possible slab remnants below Central and Eastern United States. We further exploited the newly developed 2D finite-difference method with various mantle heterogeneity models to better understand the possible geophysical features producing these anomalies.