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Title: Seismic Tomography 2024

Journal Article · · Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1785/0120230229 · OSTI ID:2426716
ORCiD logo [1]; ORCiD logo [2]; ORCiD logo [3]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [5]; ORCiD logo [6]; ORCiD logo [7]; ORCiD logo [8]; ORCiD logo [7]; ORCiD logo [7]; ORCiD logo [5];  [9];  [10];  [11];  [12]; ORCiD logo [13]; ORCiD logo [4]; ORCiD logo [14]
  1. Eidgenoessische Technische Hochschule (ETH), Zurich (Switzerland)
  2. Australian National Univ., Canberra (Australia)
  3. Brown Univ., Providence, RI (United States)
  4. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
  5. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  6. Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK (United States)
  7. Univ. of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
  8. US Geological Survey, Menlo Park, CA (United States)
  9. Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO (United States)
  10. Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
  11. Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI (United States)
  12. Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA (United States)
  13. Univ. of Toronto, ON (Canada)
  14. Univ. of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT (United States)

Seismic tomography is the most abundant source of information about the internal structure of the Earth at scales ranging from a few meters to thousands of kilometers. It constrains the properties of active volcanoes, earthquake fault zones, deep reservoirs and storage sites, glaciers and ice sheets, or the entire globe. It contributes to outstanding societal problems related to natural hazards, resource exploration, underground storage, and many more. The recent advances in seismic tomography are being translated to nondestructive testing, medical ultrasound, and helioseismology. Nearly 50 yr after its first successful applications, this article offers a snapshot of modern seismic tomography. Focused on major challenges and particularly promising research directions, it is intended to guide both Earth science professionals and early-career scientists. The individual contributions by the coauthors provide diverse perspectives on topics that may at first seem disconnected but are closely tied together by a few coherent threads: multiparameter inversion for properties related to dynamic processes, data quality, and geographic coverage, uncertainty quantification that is useful for geologic interpretation, new formulations of tomographic inverse problems that address concrete geologic questions more directly, and the presentation and quantitative comparison of tomographic models. Finally, it remains to be seen which of these problems will be considered solved, solved to some extent, or practically unsolvable over the next decade.

Research Organization:
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC52-07NA27344
OSTI ID:
2426716
Report Number(s):
LLNL--JRNL-854324; 1082701
Journal Information:
Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, Journal Name: Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 114; ISSN 0037-1106
Publisher:
Seismological Society of AmericaCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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Dataset related to article: "REVEAL: A Global Full-Waveform Inversion Model" dataset January 2024