Structure of the earth's core and lowermost mantle from seismic PKP waves

This thesis addresses the fine structure, both radial and lateral, of compressional wave velocity and attenuation of the Earth's core and the lowermost mantle using waveforms, differential travel times and amplitudes of PKP waves, which penetrate the Earth's core.

The structure near the inner core boundary (ICB) is studied by analyzing waveforms of a regional sample. The waveform modeling approach is demonstrated to be an effective tool for constrainning the ICB structure. The best model features a sharp velocity jump of 0.78km/s at the ICB and a low velocity gradient at the lowermost outer core (indicating possible inhomogeneity) and high attenuation at the top of the inner core.

A spherically symmetric P-wave model of the core, is proposed from PKP differential times, waveforms and amplitudes. The ICB remains sharp with a velocity jump of 0. 78km/ s. A very low velocity gradient at the base of the fluid core is demonstrated to be a robust feature, indicating inhomogeneity is practically inevitable. The model also indicates that the attenuation in the inner core decreases with depth. The velocity at D" is smaller than PREM.

The inner core is confirmed to be very anisotropic, possessing a cylindrical symmetry around the Earth spin axis with the N-S direction 3% faster than the E-W direction. All of the N-S rays through the inner core were found to be faster than the E-W rays by 1.5 to 3.5s. Exhaustive data selection and efforts in insolating contributions from the region above ensure that this is an inner core feature.

The anisotropy at the very top of the inner core is found to be distinctly different from the deeper part. The top 60km of the inner core is not anisotropic. From 60km to 150km, there appears to be a transition from isotropy to anisotropy.

PKP differential travel times are used to study the P velocity structure in D". Systematic regional variations of up to 2s in AB-DF times were observed, attributed primarily to heterogeneities in the lower 500km of the mantle. However, direct comparisons with tomographic models are not successful.

Cloud computing services for seismic networks

This thesis describes a compositional framework for developing situation awareness applications: applications that provide ongoing information about a user's changing environment. The thesis describes how the framework is used to develop a situation awareness application for earthquakes. The applications are implemented as Cloud computing services connected to sensors and actuators. The architecture and design of the Cloud services are described and measurements of performance metrics are provided. The thesis includes results of experiments on earthquake monitoring conducted over a year. The applications developed by the framework are (1) the CSN --- the Community Seismic Network --- which uses relatively low-cost sensors deployed by members of the community, and (2) SAF --- the Situation Awareness Framework --- which integrates data from multiple sources, including the CSN, CISN --- the California Integrated Seismic Network, a network consisting of high-quality seismometers deployed carefully by professionals in the CISN organization and spread across Southern California --- and prototypes of multi-sensor platforms that include carbon monoxide, methane, dust and radiation sensors.

Exploiting seismic waveforms of ambient noise and earthquakes

In this thesis, I apply detailed waveform modeling to study noise correlations in different environments, and earthquake waveforms for source parameters and velocity structure.

Green's functions from ambient noise correlations have primarily been used for travel-time measurement. In Part I of this thesis, by detailed waveform modeling of noise correlation functions, I retrieve both surface waves and crustal body waves from noise, and use them in improving earthquake centroid locations and regional crustal structures. I also present examples in which the noise correlations do not yield Green's functions, yet the results are still interesting and useful after case-by-case analyses, including non-uniform distribution of noise sources, spurious velocity changes, and noise correlations on the Amery Ice Shelf.

In Part II of this thesis, I study teleseismic body waves of earthquakes for source parameters or near-source structure. With the dense modern global network and improved methodologies, I obtain high-resolution earthquake locations, focal mechanisms and rupture processes, which provide critical insights to earthquake faulting processes in shallow and deep parts of subduction zones. Waveform modeling of relatively simple subduction zone events also displays new constraints on the structure of subducted slabs.

In summary, behind my approaches to the relatively independent problems, the philosophy is to bring observational insights from seismic waveforms in critical and simple ways.

Methods of multiparameter inversion of seismic data using the acoustic and elastic born approximations

This thesis presents two different forms of the Born approximations for acoustic and elastic wavefields and discusses their application to the inversion of seismic data. The Born approximation is valid for small amplitude heterogeneities superimposed over a slowly varying background. The first method is related to frequency-wavenumber migration methods. It is shown to properly recover two independent acoustic parameters within the bandpass of the source time function of the experiment for contrasts of about 5 percent from data generated using an exact theory for flat interfaces. The independent determination of two parameters is shown to depend on the angle coverage of the medium. For surface data, the impedance profile is well recovered.

The second method explored is mathematically similar to iterative tomographic methods recently introduced in the geophysical literature. Its basis is an integral relation between the scattered wavefield and the medium parameters obtained after applying a far-field approximation to the first-order Born approximation. The Davidon-Fletcher-Powell algorithm is used since it converges faster than the steepest descent method. It consists essentially of successive backprojections of the recorded wavefield, with angular and propagation weighing coefficients for density and bulk modulus. After each backprojection, the forward problem is computed and the residual evaluated. Each backprojection is similar to a before-stack Kirchhoff migration and is therefore readily applicable to seismic data. Several examples of reconstruction for simple point scatterer models are performed. Recovery of the amplitudes of the anomalies are improved with successive iterations. Iterations also improve the sharpness of the images.

The elastic Born approximation, with the addition of a far-field approximation is shown to correspond physically to a sum of WKBJ-asymptotic scattered rays. Four types of scattered rays enter in the sum, corresponding to P-P, P-S, S-P and S-S pairs of incident-scattered rays. Incident rays propagate in the background medium, interacting only once with the scatterers. Scattered rays propagate as if in the background medium, with no interaction with the scatterers. An example of P-wave impedance inversion is performed on a VSP data set consisting of three offsets recorded in two wells.

Travel time tomographic studies of seismic structures around subducted lithospheric slabs

The nature of the subducted lithospheric slab is investigated seismologically by tomographic inversions of ISC residual travel times. The slab, in which nearly all deep earthquakes occur, is fast in the seismic images because it is much cooler than the ambient mantle. High resolution three-dimensional P and S wave models in the NW Pacific are obtained using regional data, while inversion for the SW Pacific slabs includes teleseismic arrivals. Resolution and noise estimations show the models are generally well-resolved.

The slab anomalies in these models, as inferred from the seismicity, are generally coherent in the upper mantle and become contorted and decrease in amplitude with depth. Fast slabs are surrounded by slow regions shallower than 350 km depth. Slab fingering, including segmentation and spreading, is indicated near the bottom of the upper mantle. The fast anomalies associated with the Japan, Izu-Bonin, Mariana and Kermadec subduction zones tend to flatten to sub-horizontal at depth, while downward spreading may occur under parts of the Mariana and Kuril arcs. The Tonga slab appears to end around 550 km depth, but is underlain by a fast band at 750-1000 km depths.

The NW Pacific model combined with the Clayton-Comer mantle model predicts many observed residual sphere patterns. The predictions indicate that the near-source anomalies affect the residual spheres less than the teleseismic contributions. The teleseismic contributions may be removed either by using a mantle model, or using teleseismic station averages of residuals from only regional events. The slab-like fast bands in the corrected residual spheres are are consistent with seismicity trends under the Mariana Tzu-Bonin and Japan trenches, but are inconsistent for the Kuril events.

The comparison of the tomographic models with earthquake focal mechanisms shows that deep compression axes and fast velocity slab anomalies are in consistent alignment, even when the slab is contorted or flattened. Abnormal stress patterns are seen at major junctions of the arcs. The depth boundary between tension and compression in the central parts of these arcs appears to depend on the dip and topology of the slab.

Nonstationary response of structures and its application to earthquake engineering

This thesis presents a simplified state-variable method to solve for the nonstationary response of linear MDOF systems subjected to a modulated stationary excitation in both time and frequency domains. The resulting covariance matrix and evolutionary spectral density matrix of the response may be expressed as a product of a constant system matrix and a time-dependent matrix, the latter can be explicitly evaluated for most envelopes currently prevailing in engineering. The stationary correlation matrix of the response may be found by taking the limit of the covariance response when a unit step envelope is used. The reliability analysis can then be performed based on the first two moments of the response obtained.

The method presented facilitates obtaining explicit solutions for general linear MDOF systems and is flexible enough to be applied to different stochastic models of excitation such as the stationary models, modulated stationary models, filtered stationary models, and filtered modulated stationary models and their stochastic equivalents including the random pulse train model, filtered shot noise, and some ARMA models in earthquake engineering. This approach may also be readily incorporated into finite element codes for random vibration analysis of linear structures.

A set of explicit solutions for the response of simple linear structures subjected to modulated white noise earthquake models with four different envelopes are presented as illustration. In addition, the method has been applied to three selected topics of interest in earthquake engineering, namely, nonstationary analysis of primary-secondary systems with classical or nonclassical dampings, soil layer response and related structural reliability analysis, and the effect of the vertical components on seismic performance of structures. For all the three cases, explicit solutions are obtained, dynamic characteristics of structures are investigated, and some suggestions are given for aseismic design of structures.