Identifying global seismic anisotropy patterns by correlating shear-wave splitting and surface-wave data

By Andreas Wüstefeld, Götz Bokelmann, Guilhem Barruol, J. Montagner. 2009

169 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We compare a global compilation of shear-wave splitting measurements with azimuthal seismic anisotropy parameters inferred from surface-wave tomography. The currently available splitting dataset is taken from a novel comprehensive collection of available publications that is updated interactively online. The comparison between the two types of data is made by calculating predicted splitting parameters from the anisotropic tomography model. Comparing these predicted splitting parameters with the observed ones, we find a considerable correlation between the two datasets at global scale. This result is noteworthy, since such correlation did not seem to exist in previous studies. The spatial resolution associated with the two types of methods is rather different. While surface waves have good vertical resolution and poor lateral resolution of several hundreds of kilometers, SKS splitting measurements have good lateral, but poor vertical resolution. The correlation can be understood in light of recent propositions that anisotropy seen by SKS splitting constrains mostly the upper mantle, and therefore a similar depth region as surface waves. The correlation also confirms the generally good quality of the shear-wave measurements, as well as that of the anisotropic tomography model.

Subfields: Geophysics, Ocean Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8956638d078ef976d97d69a247e08b6b23b10d0d

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In Geophysics

1. M. Long
2. Thorsten W. Becker
3. Mark D. Behn
4. Clinton P. Conrad
5. G. Ekström
6. B. Kustowski
7. B. Steinberger

In Ocean Engineering

1. M. Long
2. Thorsten W. Becker

Citations in the corpus

• Mantle dynamics and seismic anisotropy (2010, background): “, 2005) and while global models fit relatively well, the fit is notably poor in many regions (Wüstefeld et al., 2009).”