Mantle variation within the Canadian Shield: Travel times from the portable broadband Archean‐Proterozoic Transect 1989

Abstract

We report travel times from the Archean‐Proterozoic Transect 1989. This type of data set recorded by a transect of portable broadband instruments allows us to make inferences about mantle structure in the region between the Wyoming Craton and the Superior Province of the Canadian Shield. With station separations of 50 to 100 km and frequencies up to 5 Hz the resolution of lateral changes is increased by nearly an order of magnitude over previous studies to a scale that allows us to study the relation between velocity variation in the continental upper mantle, surface geology, tectonic features and age provinces. Travel times of direct and later phases are obtained from waveform matching. The values are corrected for crustal contribution and inverted for the vertical path upper mantle delay δtUM under each station as well as the azimuthal dependence of this quantity. The prominent feature in the upper mantle delays δtUM is the variation by at least 1.5 s for S, much of which occurs over a narrow zone of just a few hundred kilometers width. This suggests a major lateral upper mantle transition which does not coincide with the surface geological edge of the Canadian Shield but is located within the shield. This same transition is also observed in shear wave splitting delay times. Surprisingly, however, the P delays do not exhibit a corresponding variation. We address this apparent contradiction and show how it may be explained in conjunction with anisotropy in the subcontinental lithosphere. A simplified thermal model of the lithospheric transition zone, in which temperature controls the degree of crystallographic alignment and thus seismic anisotropy, predicts this phenomenon.