Lower Mantle Seismic structures investigated with unusual seismic phases

通过异常地震阶段研究下地幔地震结构

• 批准号: 505078268
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Christine Thomas
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Institut für Geophysik
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 资助国家: 德国
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/505078268?language=en
• 关键词: Lower; Mantle; Seismic; structures; investigated

Understanding structures in the Earth lower mantle provides information about mineralogy and dynamics within the mantle. Especially the lowermost mantle has been shown to contain a number of different structures on several length scales including reflectors at different depth and large regions of reduced velocity (LLSVPs). While it is possible to test many regions in the Earth, a better coverage is often limited by i) the available source-receiver combinations and ii) distance ranges needed to study a particular seismic wave and hence a particular region in the Earth's mantle. In this study, we aim to use unusual seismic arrivals in the wavefield, understand and validate their origin, and eventually use them to study the deep mantle in the Northern and Western Pacific and Atlantic in order to enhance our coverage of the lower mantle structures in the target areas. This proposal is therefore partly exploratory, since we want to test new seismic arrivals that we have observed in previous datasets but we do not understand the origin of these arrivals yet, although first indications suggest that they originate in the lower mantle. The two target regions are places near the edges of the LLSVPs and understanding structures in these areas will provide further knowledge on mantle dynamics and mineralogy as well as connections between lower mantle reflectors and LLSVPs. We will also use standard seismic waves to map reflectors in the lower mantel and extract their properties also for validation of the origin of the unusual seismic waves. An important step is the comparison of the results in the two target regions, i.e. the Northern and Western Pacific with the Atlantic, since this will help to understand i) whether the imaged structures are of global origin or more local phenomena and ii) whether there are differences between the African and the Pacific LLSVP. Only through an integration of all wave information, including amplitudes, polarities, waveforms, arrival times and frequency dependence and subsequent modelling results can we achieve to gain detailed knowledge on seismic structures. Previous studies often use only one type of method or one type of seismic wave to decipher the origin of LLSVPs but here we aim for a much more complete view of the structure by using combinations of standard and unusual seismic phase observations.

了解地球下地幔的结构可以提供有关地幔矿物学和动力学的信息。特别是最低地幔已被证明包含一些不同的结构在几个长度尺度上，包括反射体在不同的深度和大区域的速度降低（LLSVP）。虽然可以测试地球上的许多区域，但更好的覆盖范围通常受到以下因素的限制：i）可用的震源-接收器组合，以及ii）研究特定地震波并因此研究地球地幔中的特定区域所需的距离范围。在这项研究中，我们的目标是使用不寻常的地震波场到达，了解和验证他们的起源，并最终使用它们来研究深地幔在北方和西太平洋和大西洋，以提高我们的覆盖范围的下地幔结构的目标地区。因此，这一提议在一定程度上是探索性的，因为我们想测试我们在以前的数据集中观察到的新的地震波，但我们还不了解这些波的起源，尽管初步迹象表明它们起源于下地幔。这两个目标区域靠近LLSVP的边缘，了解这些区域的结构将提供有关地幔动力学和矿物学以及下地幔反射层与LLSVP之间联系的进一步知识。我们还将使用标准地震波来映射下地幔中的反射体，并提取它们的属性，以验证异常地震波的起源。一个重要步骤是比较两个目标区域的结果，即北方和西太平洋与大西洋的结果，因为这将有助于了解：（一）成像结构是全球性的还是更多的局部现象;（二）非洲和太平洋LLSVP之间是否存在差异。只有通过整合所有的波信息，包括振幅、极性、波形、到达时间和频率依赖性以及随后的模拟结果，我们才能获得关于地震结构的详细知识。以前的研究通常只使用一种类型的方法或一种类型的地震波来破译LLSVP的起源，但在这里，我们的目标是通过使用标准和不寻常的地震相位观测的组合来更完整地了解结构。