Crustal S-wave velocity structure of the Yellowstone region using a seismic ambient noise method

The Yellowstone volcano is one of the largest active volcanoes in the world, and its potential hazards demand detailed seismological and geodetic studies. Previous studies with travel time tomography and receiver functions have revealed a low-velocity layer in the crust beneath the Yellowstone volcano, suggesting the presence of a magma chamber at depth. We use ambient seismic noise from regional seismic stations to retrieve short-period surface waves and then study the shallow shear velocity structure of the Yellowstone region by surface wave dispersion analysis. We first obtained a crustal model of the area outside of the Yellowstone volcano and then constructed an absolute shear wave velocity structure in combination with receiver function results for the crust beneath the Yellowstone volcano. The velocity model shows a low-velocity layer with shear velocity at around 1.3 km/s, suggesting that a large-scale magma chamber exists at shallow levels within the crust of the Yellowstone volcanic region.

Comparison of ground truth location of earthquake from InSAR and from ambient seismic noise: A case study of the 1998 Zhangbei earthquake

Because ambient seismic noise provides estimated Green’s function （EGF） between two sites with high accuracy, Rayleigh wave propagation along the path connecting the two sites is well resolved. Therefore, earthquakes which are close to one seismic station can be well located with calibration extracting from EGF. We test two algorithms in locating the 1998 Zhangbei earthquake, one algorithm is waveform-based, and the other is traveltime-based. We first compute EGF between station ZHB （a station about 40 km away from the epicenter） and five IC/IRIS stations. With the waveform-based approach, we calculate 1D synthetic single-force Green’s functions between ZHB and other four stations, and obtain traveltime corrections by correlating synthetic Green’s functions with EGFs in period band of 10–30 s. Then we locate the earthquake by minimizing the differential travel times between observed earthquake waveform and the 1D synthetic earthquake waveforms computed with focal mechanism provided by Global CMT after traveltime correction from EGFs. This waveform-based approach yields a location which error is about 13 km away from the location observed with InSAR. With the traveltime-based approach, we begin with measuring group velocity from EGFs as well as group arrival time on observed earthquake waveforms, and then locate the earthquake by minimizing the difference between observed group arrival time and arrival time measured on EGFs. This traveltime-based approach yields accuracy of 3 km, Therefore it is feasible to achieve GT5 （ground truth location with accuracy 5 km） with ambient seismic noises. The less accuracy of the waveform-based approach was mainly caused by uncertainty of focal mechanism.

Stationary phase approximation in the ambient noise method revisited

The method of extracting Green＇s function between stations from cross correlation has proven to be effective theoretically and experimentally. It has been widely applied to surface wave tomography of the crust and upmost mantle. However, there are still controversies about why this method works. Snieder employed stationary phase approximation in evaluating contribution to cross correlation function from scatterers in the whole space, and concluded that it is the constructive interference of waves emitted by the scatterers near the receiver line that leads to the emergence of Green＇s function. His derivation demonstrates that cross correlation function is just the convolution of noise power spectrum and the Green＇s function. However, his derivation ignores influence from the two stationary points at infinities, therefore it may fail when attenuation is absent. In order to obtain accurate noise-correlation function due to scatters over the whole space, we compute the total contribution with numerical integration in polar coordinates. Our numerical computation of cross correlation function indicates that the incomplete stationary phase approximation introduces remarkable errors to the cross correlation function, in both amplitude and phase, when the frequency is low with reasonable quality factor Q. Our results argue that the dis- tance between stations has to be beyond several wavelengths in order to reduce the influence of this inaccuracy on the applications of ambient noise method, and only the station pairs whose distances are above several （〉5） wavelengths can be used.

Ambient noise surface wave tomography of the Makran subduction zone,south-east Iran:Implications for crustal and uppermost mantle structures

Seismic ambient noise of surface wave tomography was applied to estimate Rayleigh wave empirical Green＇s functions （EGFs） and then to study crust and uppermost mantle structure beneath the Makran region in south-east 1mn. 12 months of continuous data from January 2009 through January 2010, recorded at broadband seismic stations, were analyzed. Group velocities of the fundamental mode Rayleigh wave dispersion curves were obtained from the empirical Green＇s functions. Multiple- filter analysis was used to plot group velocity variations at periods from 10 to 50 s. Using group velocity dispersion curves, 1-D Vs velocity models were calculated between several station pairs. The final results demonstrate signifi- cant agreement to known geological and tectonic features. Our tomography maps display low-velocity anomaly with SW-NE trend, comparable with volcanic arc settings of the Makran region which may be attributable to the geometry of Arabian Plate subducting beneath the overriding the Lut block. The northward subducting Arabian Plate is deter- mined by high-velocity anomaly along the Straits of Hor- muz. At short periods （〈20 s）, there is a sharp transition boundary between low- and high-velocity transition zone with the NW trending at the western edge of Makran which is attributable to the Minab fault system.

Rayleigh waves from correlation of seismic noise in Great Island of Tierra del Fuego,Argentina:Constraints on upper crustal structure

In this study, the ambient seismic noise cross-correlation technique is applied to estimate the upper structure of the crust beneath Great Island of Tierra del Fuego（TdF）, Argentina, by the analysis of shortperiod Rayleigh wave group velocities. The island, situated in the southernmost South America, is a key area of investigation among the interaction between the South American and Scotia plates and is considered as a very seismically active one. Through cross-correlating the vertical components of ambient seismic noise registered at four broadband stations in TdF, we were able to extract Rayleigh waves which were used to estimate group velocities in the period band of 2.5-16 s using a timefrequency analysis. Although ambient noise sources are distributed in homogeneously, robust empirical Green＇s functions could be recovered from the cross-correlation of 12 months of ambient noise, The observed group velocities were inverted considering a non-linear iterative damped least-squares inversion procedure and several 1-D shear wave velocity models of the upper crust were obtained.According to the inversion results, the S-wave velocity ranges between 1.75 and 3,7 km/s in the first10 km of crust, depending on the pair of stations considered. These results are in agreement to the major known surface and sub-surface geological and tectonic features known in the area. This study represents the first ambient seismic noise analysis in TdF in order to constraint the upper crust beneath this region.It can also be considered as a successful feasibility study for future analyses with a denser station deployment for a more detailed imaging of structure.

Comparison of four techniques for estimating temporal change of seismic velocity with passive image interferometry

Passive image interferometry （PII） is becoming a powerful tool for detecting the temporal variations in the Earth＇s structure, which applies coda wave interferometry to the waveforrns from the cross-correlation of seismic ambient noise. There are four techniques for estimating temporal change of seismic velocity with PII： moving-window cross-correlation technique （MWCCT）, moving-window cross-spectrum technique （MWCST）, stretching technique （ST） and moving-window stretching technique （MWST）. In this paper, we use the continuous seismic records from a typical station pair near the Wenchuan Ms8.0 earthquake fault zone and generate three sets of waveforms by stacking cross-correlation function of ambient noise with different numbers of days, and then apply four techniques to processing the three sets of waveforms and compare their results. Our results indicate that the techniques based on moving-window （MWCCT, MWCST and MWST） are superior in detecting the change of seismic velocity, and the MWCST can give a better estimate of velocity change than the other moving-window techniques due to measurement error. We also investigate the clock errors and their influences on measuring velocity change. We find that when the clock errors are not very large, they have limited impact on the estimate of the velocity change with the moving-window techniques.