Passive Seismic Tomography: Evaluating the Effect of Earthquake Clustering on Crustal Structure Accuracy
摘要
In Earth physics, mathematical theories are applied to quantify and model the physical properties of the inner Earth. By analyzing seismic waves’ arrival times at seismometers, the velocity of wave propagation can be determined, and valuable insights into rock properties can be gained. Passive seismic tomography involves the resolution of two inverse problems: earthquake localization and computation of wave propagation velocity. When dealing with the inverse problem in geophysics, the potential non-uniqueness of the solution due to errors in the data must be acknowledged. To address this, mathematical and physical theories and prior information about the model can be leveraged to constrain the solutions and generate more realistic models. This approach allows the refinement of the Earth’s inner processes understanding and the improvement of the model accuracy. The importance of uniform distribution of seismic wave paths is crucial in the resolution of tomographic images. Generally, earthquake clustering generates biased calculation of velocities due to the lack of even sampling of cell calculation. This study emphasizes the fact that rather than the number of earthquakes and stations, it is their uniform distribution that plays a critical role in seismic tomography accuracy.