38 Insights on the Ongoing Dynamics of Northeastern North America from Geology and Geophysics

Monday, 18 March 2019
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM
Vermont Room

SEISMIC CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND CRUST REVEALED BY FULL-WAVE AMBIENT NOISE TOMOGRAPHY

Paper number: 38-10
Program: Theme Sessions
Time: 4:25 PM – 4:45 PM

Authors

  • Xiaotao Yang Presenting Author
    University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA
  • Haiying Gao
    University of Massachusetts Amherst, Amherst, MA
  • Maureen Long
    Yale UniversityGeology and Geophysics, New Haven, CT

Abstract

The eastern North American margin has undergone two complete Wilson cycles of assembly and breakup of the supercontinents, together with terrane accretion, rifting, and post-rift evolution. It is not clear how the continental crust has been modified by these tectonic processes. Southern New England, which is composed of a few tectonic terranes, is an ideal place to study the crustal modification associated with the tectonic activities inferred from surface geology. The deployments of the EarthScope Transportable Array (~70-km spacing) in the northeastern United States and the SEISConn (Seismic Experiment for Imaging Structure beneath Connecticut) array (~ 10-km spacing) have provided unprecedently dense coverage of seismic data for southern New England. We collected the continuous seismic recordings between 2013 and 2018 from all available seismic stations, and extracted high-quality surface-wave empirical Green’s functions at periods of 3-40 s. Using full-wave ambient noise tomography, we aim to construct a high-resolution 3-D velocity model for the crust. Our preliminary tomographic results demonstrate strong variations of the crustal velocities in southern New England, revealing a thinner crust beneath the Hartford Basin compared to the surroundings. We are finalizing the tomographic result for further interpretation of the tectonic implications, which will be presented at the conference.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 51, No. 1

doi: 10.1130/abs/2019NE-328012

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