Upper mantle P-wave velocity structure beneath northern Lake Malawi and the Rungwe Volcanic Province, East Africa

Abstract:

A recent deployment of 55 broadband seismic stations around the northern Lake Malawi rift as part of the SEGMeNT project have provided a new dataset for imaging crustal and upper mantle structure beneath the Rungwe volcanic center and northern most segment of the Lake Malawi Rift. The goal of our study is to characterize the upper mantle velocity structure and determine to what extent the rifting has been influenced by magmatism. P relative arrival time residuals have been obtained for 115 teleseismic events with magnitudes > 5 in the 30 - 90 degree distance range. They are being tomographically inverted, together with travel time residuals from previous deployments for a 3-D velocity model of the upper mantle. Preliminary results indicate a low wave speed anomaly in the uppermost mantle beneath the Rungwe volcanics. Future results will determine if this anomaly exists under the northern Lake Malawi rift.