Rayleigh-Wave, Group-Velocity Tomography of the Borborema Province, NE Brazil, from Ambient Seismic Noise

Abstract

Ambient seismic noise has traditionally been regarded as an unwanted perturbation that “contaminates” earthquake data. Over the last decade, however, it has been shown that consistent information about subsurface structure can be extracted from ambient seismic noise. By cross-correlation of noise simultaneously recorded at two seismic stations, the empirical Green’s function for the propagating medium between them can be reconstructed. Moreover, for periods less than 30 s the seismic spectrum of ambient noise is dominated by microseismic energy and, because microseismic energy travels mostly as surface-waves, the reconstruction of the empirical Green’s function is usually proportional to the surface-wave portion of the seismic wavefield. In this paper, we present 333 empirical Green’s functions obtained from stacked cross-correlations of one month of vertical component ambient seismic noise for different pairs of seismic stations in the Borborema Province of NE Brazil. The empirical Green’s functions show that the signal obtained is dominated by Rayleigh waves and that dispersion velocities can be measured reliably for periods between 5 and 20 s. The study includes permanent stations from a monitoring seismic network and temporary stations from past passive experiments in the region, resulting in a combined network of 34 stations separated by distances between approximately 40 and 1,287 km. Fundamental-mode group velocities were obtained for all station pairs and then tomographically inverted to produce maps of group velocity variation. For short periods (5–10 s) the tomographic maps correlate well with surface geology, with slow velocities delineating the main rift basins (Potiguar, Tucano, and Reconcavo) and fast velocities delineating the location of the Precambrian Sao Francisco craton and the Rio Grande do Norte domain. For longer periods (15–20 s) most of the velocity anomalies fade away, and only those associated with the deep Tucano basin and the Sao Francisco craton remain. The fading of the Rio Grande do Norte domain fast-velocity anomaly suggests this is a supracrustal structure rather than a lithospheric terrain, and places new constraints on the Precambrian evolution of the Borborema Province.