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Three-Dimensional Variations Of The Slab Geometry Correlate With Earthquake Distributions At The Cascadia Subduction System, Haiying Gao

Geosciences Department Faculty Publication Series

Significant along-strike variations of seismicity are observed at subduction zones, which are strongly influenced by physical properties of the plate interface and rheology of the crust and mantle lithosphere. However, the role of the oceanic side of the plate boundary on seismicity is poorly understood due to the lack of offshore instrumentations. Here tomographic results of the Cascadia subduction system, resolved with full-wave ambient noise simulation and inversion by integrating dense offshore and onshore seismic datasets, show significant variations of the oceanic lithosphere along strike and down dip from spreading centers to subduction. In central Cascadia, where seismicity is sparse, …