Azimuthal seismic anisotropy of 70-ma Pacific-plate upper mantle.

Author Posting. © American Geophysical Union, 2019. This article is posted here by permission of American Geophysical Union for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research-Solid Earth 124(2), (2019):1889-1909, doi:10.1029/2018JB016451.
Plate formation and evolution processes are predicted to generate upper mantle seismic anisotropy and negative vertical velocity gradients in oceanic lithosphere. However, predictions for upper mantle seismic velocity structure do not fully agree with the results of seismic experiments. The strength of anisotropy observed in the upper mantle varies widely. Further, many refraction studies observe a fast direction of anisotropy rotated several degrees with respect to the paleospreading direction, suggesting that upper mantle anisotropy records processes other than 2‐D corner flow and plate‐driven shear near mid‐ocean ridges. We measure 6.0 ± 0.3% anisotropy at the Moho in 70‐Ma lithosphere in the central Pacific with a fast direction parallel to paleospreading, consistent with mineral alignment by 2‐D mantle flow near a mid‐ocean ridge. We also find an increase in the strength of anisotropy with depth, with vertical velocity gradients estimated at 0.02 km/s/km in the fast direction and 0 km/s/km in the slow direction. The increase in anisotropy with depth can be explained by mechanisms for producing anisotropy other than intrinsic effects from mineral fabric, such as aligned cracks or other structures. This measurement of seismic anisotropy and gradients reflects the effects of both plate formation and evolution processes on seismic velocity structure in mature oceanic lithosphere, and can serve as a reference for future studies to investigate the processes involved in lithospheric formation and evolution.
We thank the Captain and crew of the R/V Marcus G. Langseth and the engineers and technicians from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who provided the instruments through the National Science Foundation's Ocean Bottom Seismograph Instrument Pool (OBSIP). The professionalism and expertise of these individuals were key to the success of this experiment. We also thank Donna Blackman, Tom Brocher, Philip Skemer, and an anonymous reviewer for their thoughtful comments which greatly improved this paper. The OBS data described here are archived at the IRIS Data Management Center (http://www.iris.edu) under network code ZA 2011–2013. The travel time picks are archived in the Marine‐Geo Digital Library (http://www.marine‐geo.org/library/) with the DOI 10.1594/IEDA/324643. This work was supported by NSF grant OCE‐0928663 to D. Lizarralde, J. Collins, and R. Evans; NSF grant OCE‐0927172 to G. Hirth; NSF grant OCE‐0928270 to J. Gaherty; and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to H. Mark.
2019-07-28