We analyse source tensor properties of seven Mw >4.2 earthquakes in the complex trifurcation area of the San Jacinto Fault Zone, CA, with a focus on isotropic radiation that may be produced by rock damage in the source volumes. The earthquake mechanisms are derived with generalized ‘Cut and Paste’ (gCAP) inversions of three-component waveforms typically recorded by >70 stations at regional …

While the first-order Born approximation is incre a singly being used in many seismic tomography efforts, its domain of validity to forward model seismic wave forms has not been quantified in the context of current 3-D earth models yet. We here address this issue by comparing teleseismic synthetic surface waveforms calculated using the Born approximation with spectral element method…

We analyse the lateral heterogeneity scales of recent upper mantle tomographic shear velocity (Vs) global and regional models. Our goal is to constrain the spherical harmonics power spectrum over the largest possible range of scales to get an estimate of the strength and statistical distribution of both long and small-scale structure. We use a spherical multitaper method to obtain high quality …

Tarim Craton is a Precambrian block situated in northwest China, just north of the Tibetan Plateau, where a large sedimentary basin with abundant hydrocarbon potential has developed. Accurate heat flow data for Tarim is vital for understanding the lithospheric evolution and hydrocarbon generation in this area; however, there were unavailable until now, due to a lack of high quality steady…

Consideration of azimuthal anisotropy, at least to an orthorhombic symmetry is important in exploring the naturally fractured and unconventional hydrocarbon reservoirs. Full waveform inversion of multicomponent seismic data can, in principle, provide more robust estimates of subsurface elastic parameters and density than the inversion of single component (P wave) seismic data. In addition, azim…

We demonstrate that first differences of polar orbiting satellite magnetic data in the along-track direction can be used to obtain high resolution models of the lithospheric field. Along-track differences approximate the north–south magnetic field gradients for non-polar latitudes. In a test case, using 2 yr of low altitude data from the CHAMP satellite, we show that use of …

A series of linear analysis was performed on the onset of thermal convection of highly compressible fluids, in order to deepen the fundamental insights into the mantle convection of massive super-Earths in the presence of strong adiabatic compression. We consider the temporal evolution (growth or decay) of an infinitesimal perturbation superimposed to a highly compressible flu…

We use the Rayleigh integral (RI) as an approximation to the Helmholtz–Kirchoff integral to model infrasound generation and propagation from underground chemical explosions at distances of 250 mout to 5km as part of the Source Physics Experiment (SPE). Using a sparse network of surface accelerometers installed above ground zero, we are able to accurately create synthetic acoustic waveforms an…

Because the Earth’s crust is quite heterogeneous and consists of various types of rocks, many faults are located near material interfaces. Recent observational studies have revealed that some faults cross the interfaces, but theoretical treatment of their dynamic behaviour is still undeveloped. In this paper, we develop a boundary integral equation method (BIEM) to analyse the dynamic behavio…

Thin plate flexure theory provides an accurate model for the response of the lithosphere to vertical loads on horizontal length scales ranging from tens to hundreds of kilometres. Examples include flexure at seamounts, fracture zones, sedimentary basins and subduction zones. When applying this theory to real world situations, most studies assume a locally uniform plate thickness to …