Seismic attenuation tomography of Eastern Europe from ambient seismic noise analysis

Abstract

Summary The Eastern-Europe region (EER), is a complex geotectonic area that captures part of the Alpine-Himalayan Orogen, the subduction of multiple NeoTethys Branches and part of the East European Craton. It is one of the most exciting geological areas in Europe due to a diversity of tectonic processes acting within it: extensional basin evolution, oceanic subduction, post-collisional volcanism, as well as active crustal deformation associated with the push of the Adria plate or the pull of the actively detaching Vrancea slab. This makes EER an excellent natural laboratory to study the behavior of the lithosphere-asthenosphere system in a heterogeneous tectonic setting. To investigate the lateral heterogeneity and physical properties of the crust in the EER, we use ambient seismic noise data recorded by the vertical components of broadband stations that have been operational between 1999 and 2020 in Eastern Europe and surrounding regions. We used this significant amount of data and the latest processing techniques of the ambient seismic noise field based on the continuous wavelet transform to compute cross-correlations between various station pairs, turning every available seismic station into a virtual source. The coda of the inter-station cross-correlograms were used to determine coda quality factors (Qc) of Rayleigh waves in four different period ranges (3.0–5.0s, 5.0–10.0s, 10.0–20.0s and 20.0–30.0s) and to invert them in the 2D space, constructing the highest resolution attenuation tomography of the region. Our results reveal high attenuation features throughout the north-east Pannonian region, the Bohemian Massif, the East Carpathians, and the Moesian Platform. Nevertheless, our findings do not emphasize a close correlation between the depth of sedimentary basins and attenuation features identified at longer periods. In addition, Qc variations are larger at short periods, indicating higher heterogeneity in the uppermost crust of Eastern Europe. Our findings demonstrate the higher efficiency of noise correlation approaches relative to earthquake data analyses investigating Qc at low frequencies.