Structure-coupled 3-D imaging of magnetotelluric and wide-angle seismic
reflection/refraction data with interfaces
Abstract
Magnetotelluric (MT) and wide-angle seismic reflection/refraction
surveys play a fundamental role in understanding the crustal rheology
and lithospheric structure of the Earth. In recent years, the
integration of the two methods in order to improve the robustness of the
inversion has started to gain attention. We present a new approach for
joint 3-D inversion of MT and wide-angle seismic reflection/refraction
data to accurately determine crustal structures and Moho depth. Based on
H-κ stacking of teleseismic receiver functions (RFs), we estimate an
initial reference Moho. This is used as input for the subsequent
MT/seismic joint inversion, where the Moho interface is updated and
crustal structures are added to the model. During the joint inversion
process, structural similarity is facilitated through the cross-gradient
constraint. Synthetic model tests show an improvement of the inversion
results over separate inversions. In particular, the tests based on two
geologically realistic models demonstrate that the crustal structure and
even the trade-off between velocity and Moho interface can be
sufficiently resolved by combined MT and seismic datasets when using the
estimates from analysis of RFs. These results show that the new method
can provide useful constraints on crustal structures including their
geophysical properties and discontinuities.