Seismic Receiver and Noise Correlation Based Studies in Australia

Abstract

This thesis is directed at exploiting information in the coda of seismic phases and the ambient noise field to provide new constraints on the structure of the Australian Continent. The exploitation of the immediate coda following the onset of P waves from a distant earthquake using radial receiver functions is now a well established method. The 40 sec interval following P contains reverberations and conversions, by deconvolving the radial component trace with the vertical components, the conversions are emphasized by canceling the part of the response that are common to both components. A member of different styles of such deconvolution, are investigated and a variant of the multitaper method is adopted for subsequent applications. The tasmal experiment 2003-2005 spans the expected location of the transition between Precambrian and Phanerozoic Australia. The 20 portable broadband stations were exploited in receiver function studies to extract S wave crustal structure through the inversion of stacked receiver functions using the Neighbourhood Algorithm. There is no clear crustal transition associated with the presence of Tasman Line. The Precambrian Cratons tend to exhibit crustal thicknesses close to 40 km but such values are also found in some Phanerozoic sites. The second part of the thesis is directed at the exploitation of ambient noise or seismic coda to gain information on the Green’s function between seismic stations. The tasmal experiment covered a significant fraction of the Australian continent with a simultaneous deployment of portable broadband stations. From these continuous records, it has proved possible to extract very clear Rayleigh wave signals for station separations up to 2000 km, and to demonstrate the frequency dependent variations in group velocity behaviour. The combination of the paths between the 20 stations localize such behaviour, but detailed images needed more data. The entire archive of portable broadband data recorded by rses was mined, and combined with data from permanent stations to provide more than 1100 estimates of in-