Crustal Structure Beneath the Gulf of ST. Lawrence, Atlantic Canada, from Ambient Seismic Noise Tomography

The Gulf of St. Lawrence (GSL), located north of the southwest-northeast trending Appalachian mountain in eastern Canada, is a major sedimentary basin with huge potentials for hydrocarbon accumulation. Important questions about the geometry and evolution of the crustal and basin structure beneath the gulf are yet to be answered. To address these issues, the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) with support from the Portable Observatories for Lithospheric Analysis and Research Investigating Seismicity (POLARIS) deployed a temporary array of broadband seismic stations in the GSL region between October 2005 and October 2008. Combined with the permanent stations of the Canadian National Seismograph Network (CNSN) in the region, the station density is sufficient for detailed seismic tomography inversion. In this study, we investigate the upper crustal structure beneath the gulf using 3 years of continuous ambient noise waveforms recorded at 25 (POLARIS and CNSN) stations around the GSL. Cross-correlation functions of the vertical component of the ambient noise wavefield for simultaneously recording station pairs (corresponding to inter-station Green's functions) are computed and analyzed using the frequency-time analysis method. Dispersion curves are measured and Rayleigh wave group velocities are subsequently extracted for periods between 2 and 20s, which are periods sensitive to the upper crustal structures. Preliminary results from the dispersion measurements indicate that mean group velocities in the region range from 2.8 to 3.2 km/s across the range of period specified. 2-D group velocity distribution for each period is determined by linearized inversion of the dispersion data. Our tomography results show prominent lateral velocity variation. Low velocity anomalies are observed at shorter periods (up to ~10 s) which correspond to the sedimentary structures at shallow depths (between 5-10 km), whereas the characteristics of upper crustal structures are shown by velocity anomalies at longer periods. Our results show striking similarities with the tomographic images obtained in the previous Canada-wide ambient noise analysis for areas where both studies overlap and are also consistent with results from receiver function and active seismic profiling studies previously done in the region. A detailed inversion of the 3-D shear velocity structure will be conducted to appropriately delineate the thickness and seismic velocity of the composite geologic units.