Presented By: Earth and Environmental Sciences
Smith Lecture: Qinya Liu
High-resolution full-waveform seismic imaging beneath seismic arrays based on ambient-noise and teleseismic body waves
The field of seismic imaging has witnessed significant advances in the past two decades resulting from the combined improvement in observational and computational seismology, including 1) increased deployment of broadband regional seismic arrays, including dense linear arrays, 2) the use of innovative dataset such as ambient-noise cross-correlation functions and teleseismic scattered and converted waves. 3) full numerical simulations of seismic wave propagations at local, regional and global scales, and their applications to full-waveform inversions resulting in unprecedented high-resolution images of tectonic regions around the globe. To take full advantage of the dense seismic arrays, particularly for regions lacking seismicity, both ambient-noise data and teleseismic body waves can be inverted in the framework of full-waveform inversion (FWI). In this talk, I review the basic theory of utilizing these two dataset jointly in FWI, as well as in combination with local earthquake data, and show our recent lithospheric imaging applications beneath Alaska, and central Cascadia. The use of these innovative datasets in FWI provides complementary sensitivities, generates high-resolution images of the lithosphere, and hence contributes to improving their tectonic interpretations.