Three-dimensional seismic velocity tomography of Montserrat from the SEA-CALIPSO offshore/onshore experiment

Abstract

The SEA-CALIPSO experiment in December 2007 incorporated a sea-based airgun source, and seismic recorders both on Montserrat and on the adjacent sea floor. A high quality subset of the data was used for a first arrival P-wave velocity tomographic study. A total of more than 115,000 traveltime data from 4413 airgun shots, and 58 recording stations, were used in this high resolution tomographic inversion. The experiment geometry limited the depth of well resolved structures to about 5 km. The most striking features of the tomography are three relatively high velocity zones below each of the main volcanic centers on Montserrat, and three low velocity zones flanking Centre Hills. We suggest that the high velocity zones represent the solid andesitic cores of the volcano complexes, characterized by wave speeds faster than adjacent volcaniclastic material. The low velocity zones may reflect porous volcaniclastic material and/or alteration by formerly active hydrothermal systems. Citation: Shalev, E., et al. (2010), Three-dimensional seismic velocity tomography of Montserrat from the SEA-CALIPSO offshore/onshore experiment, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L00E17, doi: 10.1029/2010GL042498.