Shallow crustal structures of the Tehran basin in Iran resolved by ambient noise tomography

Abstract

In this study, we present an application of the ambient noise tomography (ANT) to study the near-surface geological structures of the metropolitan Tehran/Iran region. Short-period fundamental mode Rayleigh wave Green's functions were estimated using cross-correlations of the vertical component of the ambient noise from 2009 October to 2011 May using a variety of seismic sensors, for example, accelerometers and seismometers, deployed in the Tehran area. Standard common low frequency processing procedures were applied to the cross-correlations, and shorter time-windows comprising 10-min segments were used in the processing step to enhance the time resolution of the signal in the frequency range of interest (1–10 s). Stacking was also conducted using the rms of the estimated empirical Green's functions. Our results demonstrate that ambient seismic noise tomography is a viable technique at periods of 1–10 s in length, even when different sensor types are present. Analysis of the empirical Green's functions indicates that the dominant sources of ambient seismic noise originated from the same origin, and no significant seasonal or spatial variations in the ambient noise sources were observed. Multiple-filter analysis was used to extract the group velocities from the estimated empirical Green's functions, which were then inverted to image the spatially varying dispersion at periods of lengths between 1 and 7 s using tomographic inversion of the traveltimes estimated for each frequency. The resulting group velocity maps show high correlations with known geological and tectonic features of the study region. In general, most of the Tehran basin, with certain exceptions, could be clearly resolved with low group velocities, whereas the mountain ranges were found to be correlated with high group velocities. In the Tehran basin, for 2 and 3 s periods, the low-velocity zone deepens towards the south–southwest, which reflects thicker sediments in the southern part of the basin than in the north. This feature has also been observed in other geological studies. The Vs models also show that bedrock depth varies between 400 and 1400 m from north to south within the Tehran basin. At longer periods main faults are associated with abrupt transitions between regions of high- to low-velocity anomalies. In general, our results indicate that ANT can be a flexible and effective approach for studying near-surface heterogeneity using short-period surface wave data.