Document Type
Article
Date of Original Version
2014
Department
Oceanography
Abstract
Melt generation and volcanism at subduction zones may result from several possible processes: hydration of the mantle wedge by fluid released from the slab, subduction-induced mantle upwelling beneath the back-arc, and heating of downgoing sediments/oceanic crust atop the slab. Each process predicts a distinctly different spatial pattern of melt generation and can thus be distinguished with high-resolution seismic imaging. Here we construct an upper mantle model of the Pacific Northwest using a full-wave ambient noise tomographic method. Normalized vertical components of continuous seismic records at station pairs are cross-correlated to extract empirical Green's functions at periods of 7–200 s. We simulate wave propagation within the 3D Earth structure using a finite-difference method and calculate sensitivity kernels of Rayleigh waves to perturbations of VpVp and VsVs based on the Strain Green's Tensor database. Phase delays are extracted by cross-correlating the observed and synthetic waveforms at multiple frequency bands.
Our tomographic result reveals three separate low shear-wave velocity anomalies along the back-arc in the upper mantle ∼200 km east of the Cascade volcanic arc, with the central one being the largest in size and lowest in velocity. These back-arc low-velocity anomalies are spatially correlated with the three arc-volcano clusters. The geometry of the low-velocity volumes relative to the slab and arc is consistent with the pattern of subduction-induced decompressional melting in the back-arc. Their along-strike variation suggests that the large-scale plate-motion-induced flow in the back-arc mantle wedge is modulated by small-scale convection, resulting in a highly 3D process that defines the segmentation of volcanism along the Cascade arc.
Citation/Publisher Attribution
Gao, H. & Shen, Y. (2014). Upper mantle structure of the Cascades from full-wave ambient noise tomography: Evidence for 3D mantle upwelling in the back-arc. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 390(15), 222-233. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2014.01.012
Available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2014.01.012
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