No abstract

Abstract. The mapping of variations in P wave speed in the deep mantle is restricted by the uneven sampling of P waves, in particular beneath the Southern Hemisphere. To enhance data coverage, we augmented the • 1.6 million summary rays of P, pP, and pwP that we used in previous studies with differential travel times of diffracted and refracted core phases. For the core-refracted differential travel time residuals (PKP^e-PKPr)v and PKP^•3-PKP•3c) we used 1383 cross-correlated digital waveforms as well as •27,000 routinely processed bulletin data. We used the waveform data to define quality criteria for the selection and reduction of the bulletin PKP data. For PKPDF-Pdiff we only considered 543 records derived from waveform cross correlation. No PcP data were used in this study. We used optical ray theory to calculate the ray paths associated with the P, pP, pwP, and PKP data, which are measured at 1 Hz. However, to account for the large Fresnel zones of the low-frequency (•50 mHz) PKPDF-Pdiff data we estimated the three-dimensional shape of the Fr6chet sensitivity kernels from kernels calculated by normal mode summation. The use of these kernels allows us to properly distribute the sensitivity for a given seismic phase over a large mantle volume while allowing the high-frequency data to constrain small-scale structure. The differential times are relatively insensitive to source mislocation and to structure in the shallow mantle beneath source and receivers, and they have previously been interpreted exclusively in terms of lateral structure directly above the core mantle boundary (CMB). However, images thus obtained can be contaminated by effects of small scale structure elsewhere in the mantle. Here, we do not make a priori assumptions about the mantle source of anomalous time differentials. From test inversions we conclude that (both upper and lower) mantle structures that are poorly resolved by P data can be mapped into the core along PKP paths but that the effect of outer core structures, if any, on the mantle model is small. Compared to the inversion of the P, pP, and pwP alone, the inclusion of the PKPA•-PKPr)• and PKPA•-PKP•c and PKPr)v-Pdifr data improves the resolution of structure beneath 2200 km depth. In particular, the joint inversion puts better constraints on the long-wavelength variations in the very deep mantle and yields an increase in the amplitude of velocity perturbations near the CMB that is in agreement with but still smaller than inferences from shear wave studies. Resolution tests indicate that in some regions the enhanced definition of structure is significant, but in most regions the improvements are subtle and structure remains poorly resolved in large regions of the mantle.

Tomographic imaging indicates that slabs of subducted lithosphere can sink deep into Earth's lower mantle. The view that convective flow is stratified at 660-kilometer depth and preserves a relatively pristine lower mantle is therefore not tenable. However, a range of geophysical evidence indicates that compositionally distinct, hence convectively isolated, mantle domains may exist in the bottom 1000 kilometers of the mantle. Survival of these domains, which are perhaps related to local iron enrichment and silicate-to-oxide transformations, implies that mantle convection is more complex than envisaged by conventional end-member flow models.

No abstract

P-wave tomographic images reveal that the northern Central America highlands east of the modern volcanic arc overlie a detached slab. Hypsometric analysis of the highlands in Honduras demonstrates that the region is a dissected plateau that is disrupted by normal faults near the North American-Caribbean plate margin. The dissected Central American plateau contains a network of superimposed rivers with meanders cut into bedrock; such a geomorphic character indicates that the regional uplift occurred in the absence of tilting. We propose that the epeirogenic uplift of northern Central America is the buoyant upper-plate response to the influx of mantle asthenosphere following the breakoff and sinking of the slab.