Deep Earth Seismic Structure and Earthquake Source Processes from Long Period Waveform Modelling by Mark Paul Panning Doctor of Philosophy in Geophysics University of California at Berkeley Professor Barbara Romanowicz, Chair We model long-period seismic waveforms to investigate both the deep Earth velocity structure as well as earthquake source parameters. We utilize a normal modebased perturb...

The structure of the upper mantle beneath the Australian continent is investigated using teleseismic shear wave splitting to extract seismic anisotropy. Measurements have been performed on data recorded at 190 sites with portable broadband seismic recorders, spanning almost the entire surface of the continent since 1992. The average time span of the various deployments, primarily designed for s...

Elastic anisotropy is present where the speed of a seismic wave depends on its direction. In Earth's mantle, elastic anisotropy is induced by minerals that are preferentially oriented in a directional flow or deformation. Earthquakes generate two seismic wave types: compressional (P) and shear (S) waves, whose coupling in anisotropic rocks leads to scattering, birefringence, and waves with hybr...

[1] We report complex seismic anisotropy in the top 80 km of the Earth’s inner core beneath Africa. The anisotropy in the top 80 km of the inner core is constrained using differential travel times, amplitude ratios, and waveforms of the PKiKP-PKIKP phases sampling Africa along various directions. The differential PKiKP-PKIKP time residuals (relative to the Preliminary Reference Earth Model [PRE...

[1] A hybrid method is developed for calculating synthetic seismograms for seismic waves propagating in two-dimensional localized heterogeneous anisotropic media. The hybrid method is a combination of analytic and numerical methods, with the numerical method (finite difference, or FD) applied in the heterogeneous anisotropic region only and the analytic method (generalized ray theory, or GRT) o...

Defining the oceanic lithosphere as a thermal boundary layer allows to explain, to first order, age-dependent bathymetry and isotropic wave speeds. In contrast, SS precursors and receiver functions suggest a subhorizontal interface within this layer, on top of a radially anisotropic zone. Comparing a suite of geodynamic scenarios against surface wave dispersion data and seismic discontinuities,...

Recent seismological observations reveal the presence of seismic anisotropy in localized regions at the base of the mantle within an otherwise isotropic lower mantle. These regions can be placed in a tectonic context, corresponding to locations of paleosubduction and plume upwelling. This project works toward determining whether the observed seismic anisotropy may be explained by the developmen...

[1] Previous studies have shown that radial seismic anisotropy as estimated from flow models is in good agreement with results from tomography at global scale, in particular underlying oceanic basins. However, the fit is typically poor at smaller scale lengths, particularly in tectonically complex regions. We conduct a comparative analysis of tomographically mapped and dynamically modeled radia...

Received 30 January 2004; revised 14 May 2004; accepted 14 June 2004; published 13 August 2004. [1] Shear velocity properties of D00 beneath the central Atlantic Ocean are explored using predominantly European seismic recordings of intermediate and deep focus (>100 km) South American earthquakes. Broadband data are analyzed and, when possible, corrected for upper mantle models of receiver-side ...

Seismic anisotropy has been widely studied this last decade, particularly by measuring splitting of vertically propagating core shear waves. The main interest in this technique is to characterize upper mantle flow beneath seismic stations. On the other hand, the major restriction in this method is that a single station gives a single anisotropy measurement. Alternative methods have been develop...