Upper mantle structure beneath the Alpine orogen from high-resolution teleseismic tomography

To understand the evolution of the Alpine orogen, knowledge of the actual structure of the lithosphere-asthenosphere system is important. We perform high-resolution teleseismic tomography with manually picked P wave arrival times from seismograms recorded in the greater Alpine region. The resulting data set consists of 4199 relative P wave arrivals and 499 absolute P wave arrivals from 76 teleseismic events, corrected for the contribution of the Alpine crust to the travel times. The three-dimensional (3-D) crustal model established from controlled-source seismology data for that purpose represents the large-scale Alpine crustal structure. Absolute P wave arrival times are used to compute an initial reference model for the inversion. Tests with synthetic data document that the combination of nonlinear inversion, high-quality teleseismic data, and usage of an a priori 3-D crustal model allows a reliable resolution of cells at 50 km x 50 km x 30 km. Hence structures as small as two cells can be resolved in the upper mantle. Our tomographic images illuminate the structure of the uppermost mantle to depth of 400 km. Along strike of the Alps, the inversion reveals a high-velocity structure that dips toward the SE beneath the Adriatic microplate in the western and central Alps. In the eastern Alps we observe a northeastward dipping feature, subducting beneath the European plate. We interpret this feature in the western and central Alps as subducted, mainly continental European lower lithosphere. For the east, we propose that parts of the Vardar oceanic basin were subducted toward the NE, forcing continental Adriatic lower lithosphere to subduct northeastward beneath the European plate.