A Short-Period Surface-Wave Dispersion Dataset for Model Assessment of Africa’s Crust: ADAMA

Abstract

Abstract We present the first in a series of dataset and model assessment products for investigating Africa’s lithosphere (ADAMA). This is a comprehensive catalog of short-period interstation surface-wave dispersion measurements and uncertainties. It is derived from processing continuous recordings of all publicly available three-component seismograms, spanning four decades, from ∼1372 stations, across 62 seismic networks deployed in and around the African continent. It includes Love- and Rayleigh-wave dispersion derived from frequency-domain ambient noise cross-correlation functions (NCFs). Phase and group dispersion, as well as their uncertainties, are then obtained with an iterative nonlinear waveform fitting of the NCFs, using a spectral element representation of a path-average a priori Earth model. Our catalog represents the following advances: (1) a large distribution of short period dispersion measurements: ∼114,000 interstation pairs at periods between 5 s and 40 s, (2) inclusion of uncertainties useful for regularization in continent-wide model building, (3) preliminary model assessments for different tectonic domains on the continent, and (4) an exemplary Love-wave phase velocity map obtained by Bayesian inversion revealing detailed features not previously detected. ADAMA will be used to prepare short-period, high-resolution dispersion maps, and for assessment and updates of widely used seismic velocity models of the crust across a diversity of terranes on the continent.