Morphology of extrusive basalts and its relationship to seismic velocities in the shallow oceanic crust

Recent seismic experiments have revealed that a shallow, low velocity zone is a common feature within the uppermost few hundred meters of very young (less than 100 kyr) oceanic crust at ‘fast spreading’ ridges. The shape of this zone suggests that the low velocities are related to the constructional morphology of the extrusive (layer 2A) portion of the crust. With this in mind, we use simple analytical techniques to study the effects of characteristic morphologic elements of the extrusive basalts on their elastic properties. We find that high compliance of the contacts between pillows and pillow fragments can account for all of the observed velocity anomaly. Voids between pillows are, by comparison to their effects on porosity, considerably less important. Radial (cooling) cracks and voids within the pillows themselves will affect the velocities in direct proportion to their effect on the individual pillows. The relatively rapid increase in velocity with age in these very young extrusives can be explained by welding of pillow contacts and stiffening of the individual pillows by infilling of radial fractures, both of which may take place without a large reduction in porosity. If voids between pillows are filled initially by sediments, the cementation of these materials can also cause large increases in velocity without a large addition of mass. Because of the importance of such subtle variations in morphology, there can be no one-to-one relationship between seismic velocities and porosities within the extrusive layer of the oceanic crust. Therefore independent measures of crustal porosity must be found (for example, using sea floor gravity surveys).