Tomographic Inversion for Shear Velocity Beneath the North American Plate

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Abstract
A tomographic back projection scheme has been applied to S and SS travel times to invert for shear velocity below the North American plate. The data range in distance from 8° to 80°, and a total of 3923 arrival times were used. First arrivals were measured directly off the seismograms, while the arrival times of later arrivals were found by a waveform correlation technique using synthetic seismograms. The starting model was laterally heterogeneous in the upper 400 km to account for the first‐order differences in ray paths already known. The model was divided into blocks with horizontal dimensions of 500 km by 500 km and varying vertical thicknesses. Good resolution was obtained for structure from just below the crust to about 1700 km depth in the mantle. In the upper mantle a high‐velocity root was found directly beneath the Canadian shield to about 400 km depth with the Superior province having the highest velocity and deepest root. The east coast of the United States was found to have intermediate velocities from 100 to 350 km depth and the western United States the slowest velocities at these depths. Below 400 km depth the most significant structure found is a slab‐shaped high‐velocity anomaly from the eastern Carribean to the northern United States. Beneath the Carribean this anomaly is almost vertical and extends from about 700 km to 1700 km depth. Further to the north, the anomaly dips to the east with high velocities at 700 km depth in the central United States and high velocities below 1100 km depth beneath the east coast. The anomaly is about 1% in magnitude. This lower‐mantle anomaly may be associated with past subduction of the Farallon plate beneath North America.