Elastic-anelastic Regional Structures for the Iberian Peninsula Obtained from a Rayleigh Wave Tomography and a Causal Uncoupled Inversion

Abstract

The elastic and anelastic structure of the lithosphere and asthenosphere of the Iberian Peninsula is derived by means of tomographic techniques applied to local phase and group velocities and local attenuation coefficients of Rayleigh wave fundamental mode. The database consists of surface wavetrains recorded at the broadband stations located in the Iberian Peninsula on the occasion of the ILIHA project. Path-averaged phase and group velocities and attenuation coefficients were previously obtained by standard filtering techniques of surface wavetrains and, subsequently, local dispersion curves were computed according to the Yanovskaya-Ditmar formulation. First, a principal component analysis (PCA) and the average linkage (AL) clustering algorithm are applied to these local values in order to classify the Iberian Peninsula in several rather homogeneous domains from the viewpoint of the similarity of the corresponding local dispersion curves, without previous seismotectonic constraints. Second, averaged phase and group velocities and attenuation coefficients representing each homogeneous region are used to derive the respective elastic and anelastic models of the lithosphere and asthenosphere. This purpose is achieved by using the uncoupled causal inversion of phase and group velocities and attenuation coefficients. The main features of the homogeneous regions are discussed by taking as reference the Hercynic, Alpine and Neogene domains of the Iberian Peninsula, and two questions affecting the reliability of the elastic-anelastic models are revised. First, the coherence of the shear-velocity and Q β −1 models obtained by causal uncoupled inversion for each region is analysed. Second, the influence of the causal phase and group velocities on the shear-velocity models is evaluated by comparing elastic and anelastic models derived from causal uncoupled inversion with those deduced from non-causal inversion.