HIGH-RESOLUTION SEISMIC VELOCITY AND ATTENUATION MODELS OF THE CAUCASUS-CASPIAN REGION

The southwest edge of Eurasia is a tectonically and structurally complex region that includes the Caspian and Black Sea basins, the Caucasus Mountains, and the high plateaus south of the Caucasus. Crustal and upper mantle velocities show great heterogeneity in this region and regional phases display variations in both amplitudes and travel time. Furthermore, due to a lack of quality data, the region has largely been unexplored in terms of the detailed lithospheric seismic structure. A unified high-resolution 3D velocity and attenuation model of the crust and upper mantle will be developed and calibrated. This model will use new data from 23 new broadband stations in the region analyzed with a comprehensive set of techniques. Velocity models of the crust and upper mantle will be developed using a joint inversion of receiver functions and surface waves. The surface wave modeling will use both event-based methods and ambient noise tomography. Regional phase (Pg, Pn, Sn, and Lg) Q model(s) will be constructed using the new data in combination with existing data sets. The results of the analysis (both attenuation and velocity modeling) will be validated using modeling of regional phases, calibration with selected events, and comparison with previous work. Preliminary analyses of receiver functions show considerable variability across the region. All results will be integrated into the KnowledgeBase

Tomographic Pn velocity and anisotropy structure beneath the Anatolian plateau (eastern Turkey) and the surrounding regions

An edited version of this paper was published by the American Geophysical Union (AGU). Copyright 2003, AGU. See also: http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2003.../2003GL017391.shtml; http://atlas.geo.cornell.edu/turkey/publications/Al-Lazki-et-al_2003.htmWe use Pn phase travel time residuals to invert for mantle lid velocity and anisotropy beneath northern Arabia eastern Anatolia continent-continent collision zone. The primary phase data were obtained from the temporary 29- station broadband PASSCAL array of the Eastern Turkey Seismic Experiment. These data were supplemented by phase data from available stations of the Turkish National Seismic Network, the Syrian National Seismic Network, the Iranian Long Period Array, and other stations around the southern Caspian Sea. In addition, we used carefully selected catalog data from the International Seismological Centre and the National Earthquake Information Center bulletins. Our results show that low (<8 km/s) to very low (<7.8 km/s) Pn velocity zones underlie the Anatolian plateau, the Caucasus, and northwestern Iran. Such low velocities are used to infer the presence of partially molten to absent mantle lid beneath these regions. In contrast, we observed a high Pn velocity zone beneath northern Arabia directly south of the Bitlis-Zagros suture indicating the presence of a stable Arabian mantle lid. This sharp velocity contrast across the suture zone suggests that Arabia is not underthrusting beneath the Anatolian plateau and that the surface suture extends down to the uppermost mantle. Pn anisotropy orientations within a single plate (e.g. Anatolia plate) show a higher degree of lateral variation compared to Pn velocity. Areas of coherent Pn anisotropy orientations are observed to continue across major fault zones such as the EAF zone