Surface wave dispersion, crustal structure, and sediment thickness variations across the Barents shelf

Summary. Rayleigh and Love wave group velocities were determined for 21 paths across the Barents shelf. Those group velocities exhibit regional variations of 1.0 km^-1 or more at short periods, depending upon the location of the path within the shelf. Only two different crustal shear-velocity models beneath sedimentary layers are required, however, to explain all of the group velocity data. One model pertains to most of the shelf from a longitude near the eastern coast of Svalbard to Novaya Zemlya. The other pertains to a 200 or 300 km wide region at the western edge of the shelf. Shear velocities in the upper crust of the western region are significantly higher and the crust is much thinner than they are for the rest of the shelf. That region is known to have moved to its present prosition from a point several hundred kilometres to the north during the Caledonian orogeny.
Surface wave group velocities within each of the two regions are strongly influenced by sediments which have accumulated in basins within the Barents shelf. Some of these basins, in the southern portion of the shelf, may be 10km or more in thickness.