CCREM: New reference Earth model from the global coda-correlation wavefield

The existing Earth reference models have provided an excellent one-dimensional representation of Earth’s properties as a function of its radius and explained many seismic observations in a broad frequency band. However, some discrepancies still exist among these models near the first-order discontinuities (e.g., the core-mantle and the inner-core boundaries) due to different datasets and approaches. As a new paradigm in global seismology, the analysis of coda-correlation wavefield is fundamentally different from interpreting direct observations of seismic phases or free oscillations of the Earth. The correlation features exist in global correlograms due to the similarity of body waves reverberating through the Earth’s interior. As such, there is a great potential to utilize the information stored in the coda-correlation wavefield in constraining the Earth’s internal structure. Here, we deploy the global earthquake-coda correlation wavefield as an independent data source in the 15-50 s period interval to increase the Earth's radial structure constraints. We assemble a dataset of multiple pronounced correlation features and fit both their travel times and waveforms by computing synthetic correlograms through a series of candidate models. Misfit measurements for correlation features are then computed to search for the best-fitting model. The model that provides an optimal representation of the correlation features in the coda-correlation wavefield is CCREM. It displays differences in radial seismic velocities, especially near the first-order discontinuities, relative to previously proposed Earth-reference models. This is the first application of the earthquake-coda correlation wavefield in constraining the whole Earth's radial velocity structure.

An International Virtual Workshop on Global Seismology and Tectonics (IVWGST-2020)

An International Virtual Workshop on Global Seismology and Tectonics (IVWGST-2020) was organized by the Geoscience and Technology Division of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research—North East Institute of Science and Technology, Jorhat, India from 14 to 25 September 2020. This workshop predominantly catered to undergraduate, postgraduate, and Ph.D. students, scientists, and academicians from across the globe. The primary motive of IVWGST-2020 was to inspire the participating students, perturbed by the unprecedented situation brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, with quality lecture sessions, so as to lift their spirits. The virtual workshop served as a conduit for the students and researchers to directly interact with several pioneers and prominent geoscience researchers from around the world. Lectures, via Microsoft Teams, were given by 15 eminent speakers from diverse geoscience forums and institutions, and were attended by more than 1000 participants, mostly students and researchers, from 30 different countries. This report briefly summarizes the agenda, describes our experiences hosting the virtual workshop, and documents the challenges faced.

Seismic event coda-correlation's formation: implications for global seismology

SUMMARY The seismic-event-coda correlograms are characterized by many prominent features, which, if understood thoroughly, could supply valuable information on the internal structure of the Earth. To further refine our knowledge and be able to utilize that information, all-embracing comprehension of coda-correlation's formation apart from a conjecture, is a pre-requisite. Here, we conduct a comprehensive analysis that aims at a quantitative ‘dissection’ of the formation mechanism of coda correlation. Our analysis presents relevant implications for global seismology. We demonstrate that coda correlation is dominated by a few contributions, most of which arise from the late-coda time window, 3 hr after the earthquake origin time. Our identification analysis confirms that the contributions are cross-terms between body waves. That represents an observational proof of the conjecture that coda-correlation features are formed due to body waves arriving at a pair of receivers with the same slowness. We further quantify the relationship between body-wave cross-terms and event-receiver geometries and Earth structure, which has significant practical implications. Our analysis demonstrates that body-wave cross-terms that contribute to the same coda-correlation feature sample the Earth along fundamentally different paths. They are significantly different depending on event locations, although the resulting time variation is quite small if the late coda (e.g. 3–9 hr after event origin time) is used. That explains why the late coda is more effective than an earlier time window in producing relatively stable features, as empirically suggested by previous studies. Our study enables quantitative and practical understanding of coda-correlation features in terms of their formation progress, and this opens a way to distill valuable information about Earth structure from coda correlation.

The Earth’s Correlation Wavefield: Proof of Concept, Origin and Applications

<p>We have recently shown that all features in the earthquake-coda correlogram can be explained by the similarity of seismic phases that have a common slowness for the analysed receiver pair. This includes both the features that have their equivalents in the conventional traveltime stacks, but also those that were previously unexplained. Consequently, the information contained in the correlograms – cross-correlated ground-motion time-series in a two-dimensional representation – can be used to constrain Earth’s internal structure, however, that requires a proof of concept and further investigation into the origin of the correlation wavefield. We thus first decompose relevant correlogram features into discrete constituents with respect to their arrival times and we uniquely identify contributing seismic phases to each constituent. This confirms that the correlation wavefield does not arise due to the reconstruction of body waves between the two receivers (a.k.a. Green’s function) – instead, it is dominated by the interaction of various body waves, and its features are characterised by complex sensitivity kernels.</p><p>We demonstrate that the event locations relative to the receivers alter the similarities between the body waves, and may result in significant waveform distortions and inaccuracies in arrival-time predictions. We further show that the nature of source-mechanism and energy-release dynamics are the key influencers responsible for individual correlograms equal in quality to a stack of hundreds of correlograms. In other words, a single seismic event that meets a set of criteria in the presence of multiple receivers can completely `illuminate’ the Earth’s interior. Quantitative kernel-decomposition and identification of body-wave pairs that contribute to a given feature in the correlogram, along with informed choices of seismic events, thus makes the correlation-wavefield tomography and other applications fully feasible. This has the potential to change the course of global seismology in the coming decades.</p>

Inversion of the reflected SV-wave for density and S-wave velocity structures

SUMMARY Density is one of the most essential properties that determines the dynamic behavior of the Earth. Besides, density has been commonly used to investigate the mineral composition, porosity and fluid content of rock. Therefore, a reliable estimation of the density structure is one of the most important objectives in both global seismology and seismic exploration. However, seismic inversions of independent density estimates are ill-posed because density has a large trade-off with velocities. Shear wave propagation is sensitive to both density and the S-wave velocity. We show that the reflected SV-wave (SV-to-SV wave) at an incident angle of 22.5o depends only on density contrast, and at incident angle 30o it depends only on S-wave velocity contrast. Thus, density as well as S-wave velocity can be directly inverted from the reflected SV-wave as separate and independent parameters. The forward modelling has high accuracy, the inverse problem is well-posed and the misfit function can be easily regularized. Field data application demonstrates the proposed method can efficiently recover reliable and high-resolution density and S-wave velocity of fine sturctures. Thus, this method has great potential in geological interpretation including understanding regional Moho structure, crustal and mantle formation and evolution, and rock lithologic composition and fluid-filled porosity.

Application of 2D full-waveform inversion on exploration land data

Estimating subsurface seismic properties is an important topic in civil engineering, oil and gas exploration, and global seismology. We have developed an application of 2D elastic waveform inversion with an active-source on-shore data set, as is typically acquired in exploration seismology on land. The maximum offset is limited to 12 km, and the lowest available frequency is 5 Hz. In such a context, surface waves are generally treated as noise and are removed as a part of data processing. In contrast to the conventional approach, our workflow starts by inverting surface waves to constrain shallow parts of the shear wavespeed model. To mitigate cycle skipping, frequency- and offset-continuation approaches are used. To accurately take into account free-surface effects (and irregular topography), a spectral-element-based wave propagation solver is used for forward modeling. To reduce amplitude influences, a normalized crosscorrelation (NC) objective function is used in conjunction with systematic updates of the source wavelet during the inversion process. As the inversion proceeds, body waves are gradually incorporated in the process. At the final stage, surface and body waves are inverted together using the entire offset range over the band between 5 and 15 Hz. The inverted models include high-resolution features in the first 500 m of compressional and shear wavespeeds, with some model updates down to 4.0 km in the first parameter. The inversion results confirmed by well-log information, indicate a better fit of compressional to shear wavespeeds ratios compared with the initial model. The final data fit is also noticeably improved compared to the initial one. Although our results confirm previous studies demonstrating that an NC norm combined with a source time function correction can partly stabilize purely elastic inversions of viscoelastic data, we believe that including an attenuation depth model in the forward simulation gives better results.

3DMRT: A Computer Package for 3D Model‐Based Seismic Wave Propagation

ABSTRACT The prediction of accurate source‐to‐receiver travel times and wave paths through heterogeneous media is of major interest in global seismology and microseismic communities. Many algorithms have been proposed to address this problem, among which eikonal solvers have the best accuracy but lack computational efficiency. To facilitate the use of eikonal solvers with a high performance and visualization ability, this article presents a free, open‐source, graphical package named 3DMRT. 3DMRT propagates wavefronts through a 3D heterogeneous medium. Starting with a geologic model, the package first constructs a gridded velocity model. The application implements nine eikonal solvers and provides one‐point and multipoint raytracing functionality. In addition, 3DMRT is complemented with an additional command line tool that allows integration into other programs for further applications.