Modeling anomalous surface - wave propagation across the Southern Caspian basin
The crust of the south Caspian basin consists of 15-25 km of low velocity, highly attenuating sediment overlying high velocity crystalline crust. The Moho depth beneath the basin is about 30 km as compared to about 50 km in the surrounding region. Preliminary modeling of the phase velocity curves shows that this thick sediments of the south Caspian basin are also under-lain by a 30-35 km thick crystalline crust and not by typical oceanic crust. This analysis also suggest that if the effect of the over-pressuring of the sediments is to reduce Poissons` ratio, the over-pressured sediments observed to approximately 5 km do not persist to great depths. It has been shown since 1960`s that the south Caspian basin blocks the regional phase Lg. Intermediate frequency (0.02-0.04 Hz) fundamental mode Raleigh waves propagating across the basin are also severely attenuated, but the low frequency surface waves are largely unaffected. This attenuation is observed along the both east-to-west and west-to-east great circle paths across the basin, and therefore it cannot be related to a seismograph site effect. We have modeled the response of surface waves in an idealized rendition of the south Caspian basin model using a hybrid normal mode / 2-D finite difference approach. To gain insight into the features of the basin which cause the anomalous surface wave propagation, we have varied parameters of the basin model and computed synthetic record sections to compare with the observed seismograms. We varied the amount of mantel up-warp, the shape of the boundaries, the thickness and shear wave Q of the sediments and mantle, and the depth of the water layer. Of these parameters, the intermediate frequency surface waves are most severely affected by the sediments thickness and shear wave attenuation. fundamental mode Raleigh wave phase velocities measure for paths crossing the basin are extremely low.
- Research Organization:
- Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE, Washington, DC (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- W-7405-ENG-48
- OSTI ID:
- 641008
- Report Number(s):
- UCRL-ID-129556; ON: DE98057455; BR: GC0402000
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 9 Jan 1998
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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