Moho structure of Australia from probabilistic inversion of teleseismic P-wave coda autocorrelation

Summary

The autocorrelation of the seismic transmission response of a layered medium (autocorrelogram), in the presence of a free surface, corresponds to the reflection response.

Despite many studies on the imaging of local structures through retrieval and forward modelling of stacked autocorrelograms, there is limited work on the inversion of these data. In this study, we show that the probabilistic inversion of autocorrelograms is efficient, and can be used as an alternative imaging tool when other approaches are not applicable. Here, we calculate autocorrelograms of teleseismic P-wave coda recorded on more than 1200 permanent and temporary seismic stations across Australia, and utilise a Bayesian framework to invert these data for imaging the Moho structure. The results show patterns of structures that are consistent with those seen in the Australian Seismological Reference Model (AuSREM).

• teleseismic P-wave coda
• autocorrelation
• Moho structure
• zero-offset reflection
• Bayesian inversion