Events

Speaker: Weisen Shen, Associate Professor, Department of Geosciences, Stony Brook University

Hosts: Duncan Young & Chuanming Liu

Title: Seismic architecture of the deep continental crust and its implications

Abstract: Thermal, chemical, and isostatic properties of continental lithosphere play critical roles in understanding the geological evolution and continental dynamics of the Earth. For polar regions like Greenland and Antarctica, knowledge of these properties is required to develop better understanding on how their icesheets react to the changing climate. In contrast to this importance, our assessment to these properties, especially for the deep crust, have been indirect and subject to high uncertainties. The seismic architecture of the deep crust (e.g., Moho topography, seismic velocities and their ratios) provides a unique window to constrain these properties. In this talk, I will present some recent progress in constraining and interpreting the seismic properties such as Moho and velocities of deep crust of the United States and Antarctica. The progress allows a more accurate determination of thermal and rheological properties of the continents, and brings in the potential to quantify the polar ice-sheets’ response to the changing climate.