Preliminary study of crust-upper mantle structure of the Tibetan Plateau by using broadband teleseismic body waveforms |
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Authors: | Lu-Pei Zhu Rong-Sheng Zeng Francis T Wu Thomas J Owens and George E Randall |
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Institution: | (1) Institute of Geophysics, State Seismological Bureau, 100081 Beijing, China;(2) Department of Earth Science, SUNY Binghamton, 13901 New York, USA;(3) Department of Geological Science, University of South Carolina, USA |
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Abstract: | As part of a joint Sino-U.S. research project to study the deep structure of the Tibetan Plateau, 11 broadband digital seismic
recorders were deployed on the Plateau for one year of passive seismic recording. In this report we use teleseimic P waveforms
to study the seismic velocity structure of crust and upper mantle under three stations by receiver function inversion. The
receiver function is obtained by first rotating two horizontal components of seismic records into radial and tangential components
and then deconvolving the vertical component from them. The receiver function depends only on the structure near the station
because the source and path effects have been removed by the deconvolution. To suppress noise, receiver functions calculated
from events clustered in a small range of back-azimuths and epicentral distances are stacked. Using a matrix formalism describing
the propagation of elastic waves in laterally homogeneous stratified medium, a synthetic receiver function and differential
receiver functions for the parameters in each layer can be calculated to establish a linearized inversion for one-dimensional
velocity structure.
Preliminary results of three stations, Wen-quan, Golmud and Xigatze (Coded as WNDO, TUNL and XIGA), located in central, northern
and southern Plateau are given in this paper. The receiver functions of all three stations show clear P-S converted phases.
The time delays of these converted phases relative to direct P arrivals are: WNDO 7.9s (for NE direction) and 8.3s (for SE
direction), TUNL 8.2s, XIGA 9.0s. Such long time delays indicate the great thickness of crust under the Plateau. The differences
between receiver function of these three station shows the tectonic difference between southern and north-central Plateau.
The waveforms of the receiver functions for WNDO and TUNL are very simple, while the receiver function of XIGA has an additional
midcrustal converted phase. The S wave velocity structures at these three stations are estimated from inversions of the receiver
function. The crustal shear wave velocities at WNDO and TUNL are vertically homogeneous, with value between 3.5–3.6 km/s down
to Moho. This value in the lower crust is lower than the normal value for the lower crust of continents, which is consistent
with the observed strong Sn attenuation in this region. The velocity structure at XIGA shows a velocity discontinuity at depth
of 20 km and high velocity value of 4.0 km/s in the midcrust between 20–30 km depth. Similar results are obtained from a DSS
profile in southern Tibet. The velocity under XIGA decreases below a depth of 30 km, reaching the lowest value of 3.2 km/s
between 50–55 km. depth. This may imply that the Indian crust underthrusts the low part of Tibetan crust in the southern Plateau,
forming a “double crust”. The crustal thickness at each of these sites is: WNDO, 68 km; TUNL, 70 km; XI-GA, 80 km.
The Chinese version of this paper appeared in the Chinese edition ofActa Seismologica Sinica,14, Supp., 581–592, 1992. |
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Keywords: | the Tibetan Plateau body waveforms receiver function inversion S-velocity |
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