HIGH-RESOLUTION SEISMIC VELOCITY AND ATTENUATION MODELS OF THE CAUCASUS-CASPIAN REGION

The southwest edge of Eurasia is a tectonically and structurally complex region that includes the Caspian and Black Sea basins, the Caucasus Mountains, and the high plateaus south of the Caucasus. Crustal and upper mantle velocities show great heterogeneity in this region and regional phases display variations in both amplitudes and travel time. Furthermore, due to a lack of quality data, the region has largely been unexplored in terms of the detailed lithospheric seismic structure. A unified high-resolution 3D velocity and attenuation model of the crust and upper mantle will be developed and calibrated. This model will use new data from 23 new broadband stations in the region analyzed with a comprehensive set of techniques. Velocity models of the crust and upper mantle will be developed using a joint inversion of receiver functions and surface waves. The surface wave modeling will use both event-based methods and ambient noise tomography. Regional phase (Pg, Pn, Sn, and Lg) Q model(s) will be constructed using the new data in combination with existing data sets. The results of the analysis (both attenuation and velocity modeling) will be validated using modeling of regional phases, calibration with selected events, and comparison with previous work. All results will be integrated into the Knowledge Base.