Dipankar Saikia

Imprints of volcanism in the upper mantle beneath the NW Deccan volcanic province

In this study, we investigate the transition zone discontinuities beneath the northwestern Deccan volcanic province of India through analysis of ∼1000 high-quality receiver functions abstracted from three-component teleseismic waveforms from 428 earthquakes recorded by six broadband stations in the northwestern Deccan volcanic province. Our analysis reveals that the P 410 s and P 660 s time lags are delayed by ∼1 s relative to those predicted by the IASP91 model. A largely unperturbed mantle transition zone, revealed by the transition zone time lag ( t P660s – t P410s ) of 23.83 s, implies that the observed delays are primarily associated with reduced shear velocities in the upper mantle above the 410 km discontinuity. The velocity reduction is likely to be associated with lithospheric thinning coupled with compositional and reduced thermal variations in the shallow upper mantle. Our results contrast with the normal shield-like velocity structure imaged beneath the south-central Deccan volcanic province in an earlier receiver function study. For comparison, a revised composite receiver function plot for the south-central Deccan volcanic province was constructed by employing identical receiver function processing techniques on an updated high-quality data set of 1400 receiver functions from 11 stations, which reaffirms, with better precision, the earlier results. We propose that the relative differences in the lithospheric thicknesses beneath the northwestern and south-central parts of the Deccan volcanic province possibly governed the melting and flow patterns of the upwelling mantle material, resulting in the contrasting seismic signatures. The lithospheric architecture of the northwestern Deccan volcanic province, coupled with the reactivation of preexisting rift systems, appears to have facilitated the eruption of the Deccan basalts, for which source signatures are still retained in the upper mantle.

Seismic anisotropy beneath the Eastern Dharwar craton

The southeastern Indian Shield, an assemblage of several Precambrian geological terranes, carries imprints of major tectonic events, including those related to rifting contemporaneous with India-Antarctica continental separation, volcanism, and sedimentation in Gondwana. In this study, we investigate the character of seismic anisotropy underneath 14 broadband stations spanning this region, utilizing the SK(K)S and direct S waves from earthquakes deeper than 400 km. In total, 113 high-quality splitting measurements reveal that the delay times (δ t ) between the fast and slow axes of anisotropy range from 0.32 s to 1.62 s for direct S waves and from 0.31 s to 1.80 s for SK(K)S phases. The fast polarization directions at a majority of the stations are in accordance with shear at the base of the lithosphere, coinciding with the present-day motion of the Indian plate with respect to the fixed Eurasian plate as defined through the NUVEL1A plate model. The coast-parallel splitting trends in the vicinity of the Eastern Ghat mobile belt can be reconciled by invoking a combination of anisotropy frozen in the lithosphere due to continental rifting along the eastern margin of the Indian plate and active asthenospheric anisotropy.

Tectonic tremor on Vancouver Island, Cascadia, modulated by the body and surface waves of the Mw 8.6 and 8.2, 2012 East Indian Ocean earthquakes

Author(s): Kundu, B; Ghosh, A; Mendoza, M; Burgmann, R; Gahalaut, VK; Saikia, D | Abstract: ©2016. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. The 2012 East Indian Ocean earthquake (Mw 8.6), so far the largest intraoceanic plate strike-slip event ever recorded, modulated tectonic tremors in the Cascadia subduction zone. The rate of tremor activity near Vancouver Island increased by about 1.5 times from its background level during the passage of seismic waves of this earthquake. In most cases of dynamic modulation, large-amplitude and long-period surface waves stimulate tremors. However, in this case even the small stress change caused by body waves generated by the 2012 earthquake modulated tremor activity. The tremor modulation continued during the passage of the surface waves, subsequent to which the tremor activity returned to background rates. Similar tremor modulation is observed during the passage of the teleseismic waves from the Mw 8.2 event, which occurs about 2 h later near the Mw 8.6 event. We show that dynamic stresses from back-to-back large teleseismic events can strongly influence tremor sources.