Vibroseismic Investigations of the Baikal Rift Zone With a Powerful Cvo-100 Vibrator

Abstract

The article provides an overview of vibroseismic studies carried out in the Baikal rift zone using LargeScale Research Facilities – a powerful CVO-100 seismic vibrator, installed at the South Baikal geodynamic test site SB RAS. Research is carried out according to several methods focused on different tasks: study of the structure of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle in the BRZ, active vibroseismic monitoring, and verification of velocity models of the Earth’s crust. To study the structure of the Earth’s crust and the upper mantle, there were done the vibrator-generated wavefield recordings at the stationary regional network of seismic stations in the Buryat and Baikal branches of the Federal Research Center of the GS RAS, as well as the experimental studies involving the mobile networks deployment (ICMMG SB RAS, SIPE RAS, GIN SB RAS). The aim of the work is to carry out deep vibroseismic sounding of the Earth’s crust (vibro-DSS) at the junction of the Siberian platform, the BRZ and the Sayan-Baikal folded area. The methodology is based on the study of vibration seismograms with the determination of arrival times of the main groups of waves and their correlation with the velocity models of the Earth’s crust in the BRZ. A CVO-100 vibrator and a regional network of seismic stations are used to carry out active vibroseismic monitoring of the southern part of the BRZ. The active monitoring area is about 500×200 km. During vibroseismic monitoring, there were done thorough studies of seasonal variations of the vibrator-generated wavefield and the development of techniques for spectral correction of seismograms. A seismic vibrator CVO-100 was used to carry out experimental verification of the velocity models of the Earth’s crust, developed based on the BEST and PASSCAL experimental data. The vibrational deep seismic sounding (vibro-DSS) on the Baikal – Ulan Bator profile was carried out by the ICMMG SB RAS, GIN SB RAS and BB FRC GS RAS (Russia) in cooperation with IAG MAN (Mongolia).