1,720,979 research outputs found
Dataset in support of the Southampton doctoral thesis 'The optimisation of near surface seismic reflection data'
Supporting Data for PhD Thesis.
This is split into the three scientific Chapters:
- Chapter 2 - Modelling the Acquisition Geometry of Near-Surface Marine Seismic Reflection Data
- Chapter 3 - The importance of Velocity Modelling and Uncertainties in Deriving Physical Properties for the Marine Near-Surface
- Chapter 4 - A Quantitative Geophysical Analysis of Amplitude Anomalies in Hollandse Kust West
Within each of these you will find the relevant raw & processed data (if relevant), Parameter Grids, and additional datasets that were used in the thesis and that are able to be shared. </span
Estimating excess bound water content due to serpentinisation in mature slow-spreading oceanic crust using Vp/Vs
Mature oceanic crust carries chemically bound water which may be released in subduction zones or delivered to the deep mantle. Estimating water content in slow-spreading crust is challenging due to its complex lithology, requiring both P- and S-wave seismic velocity (Vp and Vs), the latter of which has been limited. Here we show 2D high-resolution Vp, Vs and excess bound water models due to serpentinisation of mature Atlantic crust near the Lesser Antilles. The ridge-parallel line crosses eight seafloor-spreading segments with equal numbers of magma-robust and magma-poor. Hydration is highly variable and mainly accommodated in strongly serpentinised peridotites, dominantly in magma-poor segments, which are not preferentially located near fracture zones. Serpentinised peridotites (17% of the crust) host four times more water than normal magmatic crust, increasing Atlantic subduction bound water budget by ~ 50%. This has implications back in geological time such as during supercontinent breakups when slow-spreading crust subduction was more common
Microscale FEA of P-wave propagation through a saturated granular medium-Data set
Code and results for a study into the propagation of P-waves through a saturated granular medium. Code will generated ABAQUS .inp files, which after completion can be post processed to extract P-wave velocity. Results are provided, and code used to produce plots.</span
Downward continued ocean bottom seismometer data show continued hydrothermal evolution of mature oceanic upper crust
Heat flow measurements indicate hydrothermal activity in oceanic crust continues at least for 65 m.y. after formation. Hydrothermal activity progressively fills cracks and pores with alteration products, which is expected to lead to a trend of increasing seismic velocities with age. Compilations of seismic-P-wave velocity models inverted from ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) data have failed to detect such an aging trend beyond crustal ages of ca. 10 Ma. However, in these models, the velocities of the uppermost crust, where fluid flow would be most concentrated, are poorly resolved. This is because as the oceanic crust matures, the first crustal arrivals on OBS records (which best resolve upper crustal velocities using tomographic inversion), become hidden in the coda of the water wave. This may lead to the masking of any aging trend in the seismic velocities. For the first time, we show how including downward continuation (DC) in the analysis of OBS data collected across 65 Ma seafloor significantly improves measurements of the P-wave velocities of the upper crust. Our new analysis reveals a highly heterogeneous upper crust, with ridge-parallel P-wave velocity variations of 25%, implying local porosity values that are up to double that of global averages. Our new results, combined with other most recent advanced seismic analyses, reveal that seismic velocities indeed evolve with age up to at least 70 Ma, confirming that hydrothermal activity continues in mature oceanic crust.</p
Volcanic eruptions and the global subsea telecommunications network
When the first transoceanic telegraph cables were laid in the mid-1800s, rapid communication between continents became possible. The advent of fibre-optic submarine cables in the 1990s catalyzed a global digital revolution. Today, a network of > 1.7 million kilometres of fibre-optic cables crosses the oceans, carrying more than 99% of all digital data traffic worldwide and trillions of dollars in financial transactions. These arteries of the global internet underpin many aspects of our daily lives, and are particularly important for remote island communities that rely on submarine cables for telemedicine, e-commerce, and online education. However, these same remote communities are often in seismically and volcanically active regions and can be prone to natural hazards that threaten their critical subsea communication infrastructure. This vulnerability was acutely exposed in January 2022, when the collapse of the eruption plume of Hunga Volcano triggered fast-moving density currents that damaged Tonga’s only international submarine cable, cutting off an entire nation from global communications in the midst of a volcanic crisis. Here, we present a new comprehensive analysis of damage to subsea communications cables by volcanic events from around the world, and document their diverse impacts. Examples include (i) severing of the telegraph cable crossing the Sunda Strait by a tsunami triggered by the 1883 Krakatau eruption, Indonesia; (ii) ocean-entering pyroclastic density currents, lahars, and landslides during the 1902 eruptions of Mount Pelée, Martinique, that damaged six telegraph cables; (iii) destruction of a cable landing station on Montserrat by a pyroclastic density current in 1997; (iv) submarine slope failure at Kick ‘em Jenny, Grenada, that damaged two fibre-optic cables; (v) complete loss of the telecommunications network due to power outages following the 2000 eruption of Miyake-jima, Japan; and (vi) disruption to subsea cables resulting from the 2021 eruption of La Soufrière, St. Vincent. We find that the causes of damage typically relate to secondary hazards that occur not only at the same time as the eruption climax, but also some time after. There does not appear to be an explosivity intensity threshold for cable-damaging events; however, the extent of damage may be related to the original volcano morphology (e.g. steep slopes), spatial location (e.g. near the coast or partially/totally submerged), the eruption size or explosivity, and/or volcanic depositional processes involved. Based on these diverse case studies, we present lessons learned for enhancing telecommunications resilience, and discuss how subsea cables themselves can be used as sensors to improve understanding and early warning of volcanic hazards, potentially filling a monitoring gap for remote island communities.Similar content b
Structure of the central Sumatran subduction zone revealed by local earthquake travel-time tomography using an amphibious network
The Sumatran subduction zone exhibits strong seismic and tsunamogenic potential with the prominent examples of the 2004, 2005 and 2007 earthquakes. Here, we invert travel-time data of local earthquakes for vp and vpĝ•vs velocity models of the central Sumatran forearc. Data were acquired by an amphibious seismometer network consisting of 52 land stations and 10 ocean-bottom seismometers located on a segment of the Sumatran subduction zone that had not ruptured in a great earthquake since 1797 but witnessed recent ruptures to the north in 2005 (Nias earthquake, Mw Combining double low line 8.7) and to the south in 2007 (Bengkulu earthquake, Mw Combining double low line 8.5). The 2-D and 3-D vp velocity anomalies reveal the downgoing slab and the sedimentary basins. Although the seismicity pattern in the study area appears to be strongly influenced by the obliquely subducting Investigator Fracture Zone to at least 200&thinsp;km depth, the 3-D velocity model shows prevailing trench-parallel structures at depths of the plate interface. The tomographic model suggests a thinned crust below the basin east of the forearc islands (Nias, Pulau Batu, Siberut) at ĝ1/4 180&thinsp;km distance to the trench. vp velocities beneath the magmatic arc and the Sumatran fault zone (SFZ) are around 5&thinsp;km&thinsp;sĝ'1 at 10&thinsp;km depth and the vpĝ•vs ratios in the uppermost 10&thinsp;km are low, indicating the presence of felsic lithologies typical for continental crust. We find moderately elevated vpĝ•vs values of 1.85 at ĝ1/4 150&thinsp;km distance to the trench in the region of the Mentawai Fault. vpĝ•vs ratios suggest an absence of large-scale alteration of the mantle wedge and might explain why the seismogenic plate interface (observed as a locked zone from geodetic data) extends below the continental forearc Moho in Sumatra. Reduced vp velocities beneath the forearc basin covering the region between the Mentawai Islands and the Sumatra mainland possibly reflect a reduced thickness of the overriding crust.</p
Chirp sub-bottom profiler source signature design and field testing
Chirp sub-bottom profilers are marine sonar systems which use a highly repeatable source signature to facilitate the acquisition of correlated data with decimetre vertical resolution in the top 20–30 m of sediments. Source signatures can be readily developed and implemented, but an applicable methodology for assessing resolution and attenuation characteristics of these wide-band systems did not exist. Methodologies are developed and applied to seven contrasting source signatures which occupy the same frequency band, but differ in their Envelope and Instantaneous Frequency functions. For the Chirp source signatures tested, a Sine-Squared envelope function is shown to produce seismic data with the optimum resolution and penetration characteristics
Bayesian regional moment tensor from ocean bottom seismograms recorded in the Lesser Antilles: implications for regional stress field
Seismic activity in the Lesser Antilles (LA) is characterized by strong regional variability along the arc reflecting the complex subduction setting and history. Although routine seismicity monitoring can rely on an increasing number of island stations, the island-arc setting means that high-resolution monitoring and detailed studies of fault structures require a network of ocean bottom seismometers (OBS). As part of the 2016–2017 Volatile recycling at the Lesser Antilles arc (VoiLA) project, we deployed 34 OBS stations in the forearc and backarc. During the deployment time, 381 events were recorded within the subduction zone. In this paper, we perform full-waveform regional moment tensor (RMT) inversions, to gain insight into the stress distribution along the arc and at depth. We developed a novel inversion approach, AmΦB—‘Amphibious Bayesian’, taking into account uncertainties associated with OBS deployments. Particularly, the orientation of horizontal components (alignment uncertainty) and the high noise level on them due to ocean microseisms are accounted for using AmΦB. The inversion is conducted using a direct, uniform importance sampling of the fault parameters within a multidimensional tree structure: the uniXtree-sampling algorithm. We show that the alignment of the horizontal OBS components, particularly in high noise level marine environments, influences the obtained source mechanism when using standard least-squares (L2) RMT inversion schemes, resulting in systematic errors in the recovered focal mechanisms including high artificial compensated linear vector dipole (CLVD) contributions. Our Bayesian formulation in AmΦB reduces these CLVD components by nearly 60 per cent and the aberration of the focal geometry as measured by the Kagan angle by around 40 per cent relative to a standard L2 inversion. Subsequently, we use AmΦB-RMT to obtain 45 (Mw > 3.8) regional MT solutions, out of which 39 are new to any existing database. Combining our new results with existing solutions, we subsequently analyse a total of 151 solutions in a focal mechanism classification (FMC) diagram and map them to the regional tectonic setting. We also use our newly compiled RMT database to perform stress tensor inversions along the LA subduction zone. On the plate interface, we observe the typical compressional stress regime of a subduction zone and find evidence for upper-plate strike slip and normal fault behaviour in the north that becomes a near arc-perpendicular extensional stress regime towards the south. A dominant slab perpendicular extensional stress regime is found in the slab at 100–200 km beneath the central part of the arc. We interpret this stress condition to be a result of slab pull varying along the arc due to partial slab detachment along previously hypothesized lateral slab tear near Grenada, at the southern end of the LA arc, leading to reactivation of pre-existing structures around the subducted Proto-Caribbean ridge
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
- …
