Constraining Asthenospheric and Lithospheric Seismic Structure along the Yellowstone Hotspot Synopsis for NSF website
One of the most profound continental upper mantle convective phenomena is the Yellowstone Hotspot. While substantial geophysical work has been done on Yellowstone over the last 30 years, several important questions remain with respect to the upper mantle and crustal modifications produced by this Hotpot.
We propose a focused project that capitalizes on the excellent broadband seismic coverage of the Hotspot from a recent PASSCAL broadband experiment to examine: 1) how the Hotspot has affected bulk crustal velocities and thickness; 2) how the Hotspot has modified the lithosphere and lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary. The analysis will consist of two sub-projects. First, joint Pds, Sdp, and surface wave phase velocity inversion for velocity and discontinuity structure of the upper 200 km will be performed using a nearest neighbor directed Monte-Carlo algorithm. Second, depth dependent anisotropy analysis will be accomplished using the nearest neighbor algorithm to invert cross-convolved source normalized direct-S and SKS seismograms and Pds time-series.
The proposed research advances discovery and understanding while promoting teaching, training and learning. It promotes education by funding a Ph.D. level graduate student and a new Master's student for one year. Our research infrastructure will be enhanced as we gain experience with the analysis techniques proposed. Providing new and better constraints on the Yellowstone hotspot is a global issue of concern to the Earth science community. To disseminate our results we intend to publish our results in a timely manner and post our results on the web.
