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We present new anisotropic phase-velocity maps of the Pacific basin for Rayleigh and Love waves between 25 and 250 s. The isotropic and anisotropic phase-velocity maps are obtained by inversion of a data set of single-station surface-wave phase-anomaly measurements recorded for paths crossing the Pacific basin. We develop an age-dependent gradient-damping scheme that allows us to reduce the amount of smoothness damping required in the inversion. The observed isotropic phase velocities have a strong age dependence, and our results are consistent with models of half-space cooling: simple phase-velocity models that depend only on seafloor age explain |$40\text{-}97\hbox{ per cent}$| of the data variance for Love waves and |$20\text{-}97\hbox{ per cent}$| for Rayleigh waves. These values represent a large fraction, ranging from 0.55 to 0.99, of the variance reduction of our best-fitting phase-velocity models. We find that 2ζ azimuthal anisotropy is required to fit our Rayleigh wave phase-anomaly data set but that our data do not require Love wave anisotropy. Rayleigh wave anisotropy also exhibits a clear age dependence, with a large decrease in the magnitude of 2ζ azimuthal anisotropy for seafloor older than 70 Ma that cannot be explained simply as a change in anisotropy direction between the lithosphere and asthenosphere. Long-period Rayleigh wave anisotropy directions align well overall with absolute-plate-motion directions, with a median angular misfit of 20° at 125 s. However, we observe large areas within the Pacific basin with a small but consistent offset of 10°–20° between the two directions. The disagreement between absolute plate motion and anisotropy for long-period waves suggests the presence of mantle flow beneath the base of the plate in a direction other than absolute plate motion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We calculate two-station phase measurements using single-station measurements made on USArray Transportable Array data for surface waves at periods from 25 to 100 s. The phase measurements are inverted for baseline Love and Rayleigh wave phase velocity maps on a 0.5° × 0.5° grid. We make estimates of the arrival angle for each event at each station using a mini array method similar to beamforming, and apply this information to correct the geometry of the two-station measurements. These corrected measurements are inverted for an additional set of phase velocity maps. Arrival angles range from 0° to ±15°, and the associated corrections result in local changes of up to 4 per cent in the final phase velocity maps. We select our preferred models on the basis of the internal consistency of the measurements, finding that the arrival-angle corrections improve the two-station phase measurements, but that Love wave arrival-angle estimates may be contaminated by overtone interference. Our preferred models compare favourably with recent studies of the phase velocity of the Western United States. The corrected Rayleigh wave models achieve greater variance reduction than the baseline Rayleigh wave models, and the baseline Love wave models, which are more difficult to obtain, are robust and could be used in conjunction with the Rayleigh wave models to constrain radially anisotropic earth structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

SUMMARY On 2010 November 14, an intense swarm of earthquakes began in the western Gulf of Aden. Within a 48-hr period, 82 earthquakes with magnitudes between 4.5 and 5.5 were reported along an ∼80-km-long segment of the east-west trending Aden Ridge, making this swarm one of the largest ever observed in an extensional oceanic setting. In this study, we calculate centroid-moment-tensor solutions for 110 earthquakes that occurred between 2010 November and 2011 April. Over 80 per cent of the cumulative seismic moment results from earthquakes that occurred within 1 week of the onset of the swarm. We find that this sequence has a b-value of ∼1.6 and is dominated by normal-faulting earthquakes that, early in the swarm, migrate westwards with time. These earthquakes are located in rhombic basins along a section of the ridge that was previously characterized by low levels of seismicity and a lack of recent volcanism on the seafloor. Body-wave modelling demonstrates that the events occur in the top 2-3 km of the crust. Nodal planes of the normal-faulting earthquakes are consistent with previously mapped faults in the axial valley. A small number of strike-slip earthquakes observed between two basins near 44°E, where the axial valley changes orientation, depth and width, likely indicate the presence of an incipient transform fault and the early stages of ridge-transform segmentation. The direction of extension accommodated by the earthquakes is intermediate between the rift orthogonal and the direction of relative motion between the Arabian and Somalian plates, consistent with the oblique style of rifting occurring along the slow-spreading Aden Ridge. The 2010 swarm shares many characteristics with dyke-induced rifting episodes from both oceanic and continental settings. We conclude that the 2010 swarm represents the seismic component of an undersea magmatic rifting episode along the nascent Aden Ridge, and attribute the large size of the earthquakes to the combined effects of the slow spreading rate, relatively thick crust and recent quiescence. We estimate that the rifting episode was caused by dyke intrusions that propagated laterally for 12-18 hr, accommodating ∼1-14 m of opening or ∼85-800 yr of spreading along this section of the ridge. Our findings demonstrate the westward propagation of active seafloor spreading into this section of the western Gulf of Aden and illustrate that deformation at the onset of seafloor spreading may be accommodated by discrete episodes of faulting and magmatism. A comparison with similar sequences on land suggests that the 2010 episode may be only the first of several dyke-induced rifting episodes to occur in the western Gulf of Aden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]