TITLE:
Passive Seismic Deployments from the Lützow-Holm Bay to Inland Plateau of East Antarctica: The Japanese IPY Contribution to Structure and Seismicity
AUTHORS:
Masaki Kanao, Akira Yamada, Genti Toyokuni
KEYWORDS:
Passive Seismic Deployments; Lützow-Holm Bay; East Antarctica; Mantle Structure; Earth’s Deep Interiors
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Geosciences,
Vol.4 No.5,
July
11,
2013
ABSTRACT: Deployments of seismic stations in
Antarctica are an ambitious project to improve the spatial resolution of the
Antarctic Plate and surrounding regions. Several international programs had
been conducted in wide area of the Antarctic continent during the International
Polar Year (IPY 2007-2008). The “Antarctica’s GAmburtsev Province (AGAP)”, the
“GAmburtsev Mountain SEISmic experiment (GAMSEIS)” as a part of AGAP, and the
“Polar Earth Observing Network (POLENET)” were major contributions to the IPY.
The AGAP/GAMSEIS was an internationally coordinated deployments of more than
few tens of broadband seismographs over the wide area of East Antarctica.
Detailed information on crustal thickness and mantle structure provides key
constraints on an origin of the Gamburtsev Mountains; and more broad structure
and evolution of the East Antarctic craton and sub-glacial environment. From
POLENET data obtained, local and regional signals associated with ice movements
were recorded together with a significant number of teleseismic events.
Moreover, seismic deployments have been carried out in the Lützow-Holm Bay
(LHB), East Antarctica, by Japanese activities. The recorded teleseismic and
local events are of sufficient quality to image the structure and dynamics of
the crust and mantle, such as the studies by receiver functions suggesting a
heterogeneous upper mantle. In addition to studies on the shallow part of the
Earth, we place emphasis on these seismic deployments’ ability to image the
Earth’s deep interior, as viewed from Antarctica, as a large aperture array in
the southern high latitude.