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- T41C-0147: Crustal Composition Modeling from Seismic Observables for the Colorado Rocky Mountains
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Board 0147‚ Hall EFG (Poster Hall)NOLA CC
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Mengjie Zheng, University of Toronto (First Author, Presenting Author)
Vera Schulte-Pelkum, Univ Colorado Boulder
Anne Sheehan, University of Colorado Boulder
Mijian Xu, University of Toronto
Qinya Liu, University of Toronto
The Colorado Rocky Mountains are one of the most prominent mountain ranges in North America and has been active in the geology history. People have long been interested in understanding what lies beneath these mountains and how their deep crust was formed. In this study, we use seismic waves, including signals directly from earthquakes and indirectly retrieved from ambient noise, to image the crust beneath the Colorado Rockies. Through analyzing how these waves travel, we can estimate seismic wave speeds of subsurface materials and crust thickness. By combining these seismic measurements with the relationships between seismic properties and rock chemistry we obtain in the laboratory, we infer the chemical composition of the crust, particularly the amount of silica dioxide, a key component that indicates rock type and provides clues about how the crust was formed. Our results show that the spatial distribution of crustal silica content correlates with areas of exposed volcanic and igneous rocks, possibly resulting from past episodes of volcanic and magmatic activity. These findings help us better understand how the Colorado Rockies formed and evolved over time, as well as geological process associated with regional mineralization.
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