Study and review on crust-mantle velocity structure in Bohai Bay and its vicinity

Introduction Bohai Bay, along with its adjacent areas, is one of the seismically active areas in North China. Understanding its crust/upper-mantle structural characteristics and lateral heterogeneity of the medium in this area is of great significance to the study of seismogenic environment, thus improvimg the level of earthquake prediction. For years, scientists have studied the area by gravity and magnetic methods (FENG, et al, 1989), geothermal field (WU, et al, 1988; TIAN, ZHANG, 19…

Study and review on crust-mantle velocity structure in Bohai Bay and its vicinity

Observational data from some of the 10-odd deep seismic sounding profiles in Bohai Bay and its adjacent areas were processed with the methods of two-dimensional ray tracing, travel-time fitting and synthetic seismogram. The crust and upper-mantle velocity structure model in this area was built. The results show that the crust and upper mantle structures present obvious lateral and vertical inhomogeneity. The upper mantle uplifts near Yongqing of northeast Jizhong depression, in Bohai Bay of Huanghua depression and near Kenli of Jiyang depression, where crustal depths are about 31 km, 28 km and 29 km, respectively. According to the dynamic and kinetic characteristics of seismic waves as well as the seismic interfaces and velocity contour undulation in the 2-D velocity structure model, three deep crustal fault zones are inferred in the area. Low velocity (5.90~6.10 km/s) layers (bodies) exist on one or two sides of these deep crustal fault zones.