Automated multimode phase speed measurements for high-resolution regional-scale tomography: application to North America

A fully automated method for obtaining multimode phase speed measurements from a single seismogram has been developed and applied to a large data set of three-component long-period seismograms in North America, constructing high-resolution phase speed maps on a continental scale. The method of our phase speed estimation is based on a fully non-linear waveform inversion by Yoshizawa & Kennett working with a global search method (the Neighbourhood Algorithm). The entire process of waveform fitting and the evaluation of the estimated phase speed have been fully automated employing several empirical quantitative measures, assessing the quality of waveform fit and the relative contributions of each mode in a chosen time window. The measured phase speed data undergo automatic screening for quality control, comprising the threshold evaluation of their reliability and outlier detection and removal. This new automated method has been applied to a large data set recorded at North American stations, including the latest transportable stations of USArray. Using long-period three-component seismograms recorded during the past eight years, we have successfully retrieved large numbers of regional surface wave paths, including over 20 000 paths for the fundamental-mode Rayleigh waves over a wide range of frequencies, and over 10 000 paths for the higher mode Rayleigh as well as the fundamental-mode Love waves. The consistent results of the automated measurement procedure suggest that the method works well at regional distances, allowing us to perform a high-resolution mapping of multimode phase speeds in North America. The results of the automated waveform analysis also indicate some intrinsic limitations in the higher mode phase speed measurements from a single seismogram particularly in the short period range, mainly due to the overlapping of higher mode arrivals as well as coupling between mode branches. Despite such an innate difficulty in the higher mode dispersion measurements, the automated method allows us to construct reliable multimode phase speed maps. The current data set of ray paths is significantly biased towards the western half of North America, resulting in non-uniform horizontal resolution across the continent. This issue will be resolved by the future migration of the USArray stations to cover the central and eastern United States. The new automated method can be a useful tool for high-resolution mapping of regional 3-D shear wave structure including possible anisotropy.