Rayleigh and S wave tomography constraints on subduction termination and lithospheric foundering in central California

Foundering lithosphere imaged beneath the southern Sierra Nevada, California, USA.

Seismic tomography reveals garnet-rich crust and mantle lithosphere descending into the upper mantle beneath the southeastern Sierra Nevada. The descending lithosphere consists of two layers: an iron-rich eclogite above a magnesium-rich garnet peridotite. These results place descending eclogite above and east of high P wave speed material previously imaged beneath the southern Great Valley, sug...

Seismic structure beneath the Gulf of California: a contribution from group velocity measurements

S U M M A R Y Rayleigh wave group velocity dispersion measurements from local and regional earthquakes are used to interpret the lithospheric structure in the Gulf of California region. We compute group velocity maps for Rayleigh waves from 10 to 150 s using earthquakes recorded by broadband stations of the Network of Autonomously Recording Seismographs in Baja California and Mexico mainland, U...

Lithospheric thickness, thinning, subduction, and interaction with the asthenosphere beneath China from the joint inversion of seismic S-wave train fits and Rayleigh-wave dispersion curves

Offshore Southern California lithospheric velocity structure from noise cross-correlation functions

A new shear wave velocity model offshore Southern California is presented that images plate boundary deformation including both thickening and thinning of the crustal and mantle lithosphere at the westernmost edge of the North American continent. The Asthenospheric and Lithospheric Broadband Architecture from the California Offshore Region Experiment (ALBACORE) ocean bottom seismometer array, t...

Lithospheric foundering and underthrusting imaged beneath Tibet

Long-standing debates exist over the timing and mechanism of uplift of the Tibetan Plateau and, more specifically, over the connection between lithospheric evolution and surface expressions of plateau uplift and volcanism. Here we show a T-shaped high wave speed structure in our new tomographic model beneath South-Central Tibet, interpreted as an upper-mantle remnant from earlier lithospheric f...