ALBERT

Description: The Bransfield Basin is a back-arc basin located in Western Antarctica between the South Shetland Islands and Antarctic Peninsula. Although the subduction of the Phoenix plate under the South Shetland block has ceased, extension continues through a combination of slab rollback and transtensional motions between the Scotia and Antarctic plates. This process has created a continental rift in the basin, interleaved with volcanic islands and seamounts, which may be near the transition from rifting to seafloor spreading. In the framework of the BRAVOSEIS project (2017–2020), we deployed a dense amphibious seismic network in the Bransfield Strait comprising 15 land stations and 24 ocean-bottom seismometers, as well as a network of 6 moored hydrophones; and acquired marine geophysics data including multibeam bathymetry, sub-bottom profiler, gravity & mag-netics, multi-channel seismics, and seismic refraction data. The experiment has collected a unique, high quality, and multifaceted geophysical data set in the Central Bransfield Basin, with a special focus on Orca and Humpback seamounts. Preliminary results confirm that the Bransfield region has slab-related intermediate depth seismicity, with earthquake characteristics suggesting distributed extension across the rift. Gravity and magnetic highs delineate a segmented rift with along-axis variations that are consistent with increased accumulated strain to the northeast. Orca volcano shows evidences of an active caldera and magma accumulation at shallow depths, while Humpback volcano has evolved past the caldera stage and is currently dominated by rifting structures. These differences suggest that volcanic evolution is influenced by the position along the rift. Although a lot of analysis remains, these results provide useful constraints on the structure and dynamics of the Bransfield rift and asso-ciated volcanoes.

Description: The Bransfield Basin is a back-arc basin located in Western Antarctica between the South Shetland Islands and Antarctic Peninsula. Although the subduction of the Phoenix plate under the South Shetland block has ceased, extension continues through a combination of slab rollback and transtensional motions between the Scotia and Antarctic plates. This process has created a continental rift in the basin, interleaved with volcanic islands and seamounts, which may be near the transition from rifting to seafloor spreading. In the framework of the BRAVOSEIS project (2017–2020), we deployed a dense amphibious seismic network in the Bransfield Strait comprising 15 land stations and 24 ocean-bottom seismometers, as well as a network of 6 moored hydrophones; and acquired marine geophysics data including multibeam bathymetry, sub-bottom profiler, gravity & magnetics, multi-channel seismics, and seismic refraction data. The experiment has collected a unique, high quality, and multifaceted geophysical data set in the Central Bransfield Basin, with a special focus on Orca and Humpback seamounts. Preliminary results confirm that the Bransfield region has slab-related intermediate depth seismicity, with earthquake characteristics suggesting distributed extension across the rift. Gravity and magnetic highs delineate a segmented rift with along-axis variations that are consistent with increased accumulated strain to the northeast. Orca volcano shows evidences of an active caldera and magma accumulation at shallow depths, while Humpback volcano has evolved past the caldera stage and is currently dominated by rifting structures. These differences suggest that volcanic evolution is influenced by the position along the rift. Although a lot of analysis remains, these results provide useful constraints on the structure and dynamics of the Bransfield rift and associated volcanoes.

Description: We present a local earthquake tomography to illuminate the crustal and uppermost mantle structure beneath the southern Puna plateau and to test the delamination hypothesis. Vp and Vp/Vs ratios were obtained using travel time variations recorded by 75 temporary seismic stations between 2007 and 2009. In the upper crust, prominent low Vp anomalies are found beneath the main volcanic centers, indicating the presence of magma and melt beneath the southern Puna plateau. Beneath the Moho at around 90 km depth, a strong high Vp anomaly is detected just west of the giant backarc Cerro Galan Ignimbrite caldera. This high Vp anomaly is only resolved if earthquakes with an azimuthal gap up to 300° are included in the inversion. However, we show through data‐subset and synthetic tests that the anomaly is robust due to our specific station‐event geometry and interpret it as a delaminated block of lower crust and uppermost mantle lithosphere under the southern Puna plateau. The low velocities in the crust are interpreted as a product of the delamination event that triggered the rise of fluids and melts into the crust and induced the high topography in this part of the plateau. The tomography also reveals the existence of low velocity anomalies that link arc magmatism at the Ojos del Salado volcanic center with slab seismicity clusters at depths of about 100 and 150 km and support fluid transport in the mantle wedge due to dehydration reaction within the subducted slab.

Description: This data publication includes digital data of the final 3D tomographic model from Chen et al. (2020: Lithospheric delamination beneath the southern Puna plateau resolved by local earthquake tomography). The 3D seismic velocity models are results of a local earthquake tomography which is performed to illuminate the crustal and uppermost mantle structure beneath the southern Puna plateau and to test the delamination hypothesis. The Southern Puna is distinctive from the rest of the Central Andean plateau in having a higher topographic elevation, a thinner lithosphere and in being flanked to the south by the Chilean flat slab region. Previous investigations involving geochemical, geological and geophysical observations, have invoked lithospheric delamination to explain the distinctive magmatic and structural history, elevation and lithospheric thickness of the region. In the present study, Vp and Vp/Vs ratios were obtained using travel time variations recorded by 75 temporary seismic stations between 2007 and 2009. The earthquakes catalog (Mulcahy et al., 2014) contains 1903 local earthquakes (25077 P- and 14059 S-picks). A minimum 1D model is derived with software VELEST (Kissling et al., 1995). The 3D tomographic inversion is performed with software SIMULPS (Thurber, 1983; Evans et al., 1994). Spread values are used to define well resolved model domains (6 for Vp and 5.5 for Vp/Vs), which are calculated from the model resolution matrix (Toomey & Foulger, 1989). The data are provided as one tar.gz archive. Individual ASCII files contain, at each depth from 0 to 200 km: - Vp model (model.vp.depth_???km), format: longitude, latitude, depth, Vp perturbation, absolute Vp - Vp/Vs model (model.vpvs.depth_???km), format: longitude, latitude, depth, Vp/Vs perturbation, absolute Vp/Vs - spread values for Vp (spread.vp.depth_???km), format: longitude, latitude, depth, spread value - spread values for Vp/Vs model (spread.vpvs.depth_???km), format: longitude, latitude, depth, spread value

Description: In the frame of the AlpArray project we analyse teleseismic data from permanent and temporary stations of the Alpine region to study seismic discontinuities down to about 140 km depth. We average broadband teleseismic S-waveform data to retrieve S-to-P converted signals from below the seismic stations. In order to avoid processing artefacts, no deconvolution or filtering is applied, and S arrival times are used as reference for stacking. We show a number of north–south and east-west profiles through the Alpine area. The Moho signals are always seen very clearly, and negative velocity gradients below the Moho depth are also visible in a number of profiles. A Moho depression is visible along larger parts of the Alpine chain. It reaches its largest depth of 60 km beneath the Tauern Window. However, the Moho depression ends abruptly near about 13∘ E below the eastern Tauern Window. This Moho depression may represent the crustal trench, where the Eurasian lithosphere is subducted below the Adriatic lithosphere. East of 13∘ E an important along-strike change occurs; the image of the Moho changes completely. No Moho deepening is found in this easterly region; instead the Moho bends up along the contact between the European and the Adriatic lithosphere all the way to the Pannonian Basin. An important along-strike change was also detected in the upper mantle structure at about 14∘ E. There, the lateral disappearance of a zone of negative velocity gradient in the uppermost mantle indicates that the S-dipping European slab laterally terminates east of the Tauern Window in the axial zone of the Alps. The area east of about 13∘ E is known to have been affected by severe late-stage modifications of the structure of crust and uppermost mantle during the Miocene when the ALCAPA (Alpine, Carpathian, Pannonian) block was subject to E-directed lateral extrusion.

Description: A new seismic model for crust and upper mantle of the south Central Andes is derived from full waveform inversion, covering the Pampean flat subduction and adjacent Payenia steep subduction segments. Focused crustal low-velocity anomalies indicate partial melts in the Payenia segment along the volcanic arc, whereas weaker low-velocity anomalies covering a wide zone in the Pampean segment are interpreted as remnant partial melts. Thinning and tearing of the flat Nazca slab is inferred from gaps in the slab along the inland projection of the Juan-Fernandez-Ridge. A high-velocity anomaly in the mantle below the flat slab is interpreted as relic Nazca slab segment, which indicates an earlier slab break-off triggered by the buoyancy of the Juan-Fernandez-Ridge during the flattening process. In Payenia, large-scale low-velocity anomalies atop and below the re-steepened Nazca slab are associated with the re-opening of the mantle wedge and sub-slab asthenospheric flow, respectively.

Description: The Anillo is a dense temporary seismic and geodetic network extending approximately 200 km along the strike of the subduction zone in North Chile in order to investigate how earthquakes and aseismic slip scale over a broader spectrum of source sizes, to understand the complex relationships between seismic and aseismic deformation, and to identify possible structural controls. This experiment is embedded into a larger scale experimental effort carried out by institutions in Germany and Chile. Waveform data are available from the GEOFON data centre, under network code Y6.