Geology topics

Fan-Chi Lin

Publications and source records attributed to Fan-Chi Lin.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2024

Seismic tomography 2023

Seismic tomography is the most abundant source of information about the internal structure of the Earth at scales ranging from a few meters to thousands of kilometers. It constrains the properties of active volcanoes, earthquake fault zones, deep reservoirs and storage sites, glaciers and ice sheets, or the entire globe. It contributes to outstanding societal problems related to natural hazards, resource exploration, underground storage, and many more. The recent advances in seismic tomography are being translated to nondestructive testing, medical ultrasound, and helioseismology. Nearly 50 yr after its first successful applications, this article offers a snapshot of modern seismic tomography. Focused on major challenges and particularly promising research directions, it is intended to guide both Earth science professionals and early‐career scientists. The individual contributions by the coauthors provide diverse perspectives on topics that may at first seem disconnected but are closely tied together by a few coherent threads: multiparameter inversion for properties related to dynamic processes, data quality, and geographic coverage, uncertainty quantification that is useful for geologic interpretation, new formulations of tomographic inverse problems that address concrete geologic questions more directly, and the presentation and quantitative comparison of tomographic models. It remains to be seen which of these problems will be considered solved, solved to some extent, or practically unsolvable over the next decade.

Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America↗

USGS2020

Spatiotemporal seismic structure variations associated with the 2018 Kīlauea eruption based on temporary dense geophone arrays

During the 2018 Kīlauea volcanic eruption, lava erupted from a series of new fissures in the lower East Rift Zone more than 30 km away from the summit through a dike intrusion. Between late May and early August, variations in the effusion rate at the persistent eruptive vent (Fissure 8) were observed following near‐daily summit caldera collapse events. Targeting the ongoing eruptive activity and the subsurface magma movement, we deployed a temporary dense seismic array. The observed time‐lapse changes in seismic velocity associated with the response of the summit collapse in three areas are presented in this study. The results show (1) clear spatially dependent co‐collapse velocity reductions across the newly‐intruded dike structure, (2) a gradual post‐collapse velocity increase near Fissure 8 correlated with the surge of magma supply, and (3) a gradual post‐collapse velocity increase on the summit likely associated with reservoir pressurization and crustal welding.

Hawaii↗

USGS2018

Rayleigh and S wave tomography constraints on subduction termination and lithospheric foundering in central California

The crust and upper mantle structure of central California have been modified by subduction termination, growth of the San Andreas plate boundary fault system, and small-scale upper mantle convection since the early Miocene. Here we investigate the contributions of these processes to the creation of the Isabella Anomaly, which is a high seismic velocity volume in the upper mantle. There are two types of hypotheses for its origin. One is that it is the foundered mafic lower crust and mantle lithosphere of the southern Sierra Nevada batholith. The alternative suggests that it is a fossil slab connected to the Monterey microplate. A dense broadband seismic transect was deployed from the coast to the western Sierra Nevada to fill in the least sampled areas above the Isabella Anomaly, and regional-scale Rayleigh and S wave tomography are used to evaluate the two hypotheses. New shear velocity (Vs) tomography images a high-velocity anomaly beneath coastal California that is sub-horizontal at depths of ∼40–80 km. East of the San Andreas Fault a continuous extension of the high-velocity anomaly dips east and is located beneath the Sierra Nevada at ∼150–200 km depth. The western position of the Isabella Anomaly in the uppermost mantle is inconsistent with earlier interpretations that the Isabella Anomaly is connected to actively foundering foothills lower crust. Based on the new Vs images, we interpret that the Isabella Anomaly is not the dense destabilized root of the Sierra Nevada, but rather a remnant of Miocene subduction termination that is translating north beneath the central San Andreas Fault. Our results support the occurrence of localized lithospheric foundering beneath the high elevation eastern Sierra Nevada, where we find a lower crustal low Vs layer consistent with a small amount of partial melt. The high elevations relative to crust thickness and lower crustal low Vs zone are consistent with geological inferences that lithospheric foundering drove uplift and a ∼3–4 Ma pulse of basaltic magmatism.

Earth and Planetary Science Letters↗