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Upper-mantle anisotropy in the southeastern margin of Tibetan Plateau revealed by fullwave SKS splitting intensity tomography
  • Yi Lin,
  • Li Zhao
Yi Lin
Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Earth Exploration and Information Techniques, Chengdu University of Technology, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University

Corresponding Author:[email protected]

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Li Zhao
Hebei Hongshan National Geophysical Observatory, Peking University, School of Earth and Space Sciences, Peking University

Abstract

The southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau has undergone complex deformation since the Cenozoic, resulting in a high level of seismicity and seismic hazard. Knowledge about the seismic anisotropy provides important insight about the deformation mechanism and the regional seismotectonics beneath this tectonically active region. In this study, we conduct fullwave multi-scale tomography to investigate the seismic anisotropy in the southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau. Broadband records at 111 permanent stations in the region from 470 teleseismic events are used to obtain 5,216 high-quality SKS splitting intensity measurements, which are then inverted in conjunction with 3D sensitivity kernels to obtain an anisotropic model with multi-scale resolution. Resolution tests show that our dataset recovers anisotropy anomalies reasonably well on the scale of 1º x 1º horizontally and ~100 km vertically. Our result suggests that in the southeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau the deformation in the lithosphere and asthenosphere are decoupled. The anisotropy in the lithosphere varies both laterally and vertically as a result of dynamic interactions of neighboring blocks as well as lithospheric reactivation. The anisotropy in the asthenosphere largely follows the direction of regional absolute plate motion. The SKS splittings observed at the surface are shown to be consistent with the vertical integral of our depth-dependent anisotropy model over lithospheric and asthenospheric depths.
05 Mar 2024Submitted to ESS Open Archive
05 Mar 2024Published in ESS Open Archive