LITHO1.0: An updated crust and lithospheric model of the Earth

We present the LITHO1.0 model, which is a 1 degrees tessellated model of the crust and uppermost mantle of the Earth, extending into the upper mantle to include the lithospheric lid and underlying asthenosphere. The model is parameterized laterally by tessellated nodes and vertically as a series of geophysically identified layers, such as water, ice, sediments, crystalline crust, lithospheric lid, and asthenosphere. LITHO1.0 is created by constructing an appropriate starting model and perturbing it to fit high-resolution surface wave dispersion maps (Love and Rayleigh, group and phase) over a wide frequency band (5-40mHz). We examine and discuss the model with respect to key lithospheric parameters, such as average crustal velocity, crustal thickness, upper mantle velocity, and lithospheric thickness. We then compare the constructed model to those from a number of select studies at regional and global scales and find general consistency. It appears that LITHO1.0 represents a reasonable starting model of the Earth's shallow structure (crust and uppermost mantle) for the purposes in which these models are used, such as traveltime tomography or in efforts to create a 3-D reference Earth model. The model matches surface wave dispersion over a frequency band wider than the band used in the inversion. There are several avenues for improving the model in the future by including attenuation and anisotropy, as well as making use of surface waves at higher frequency.