Analysis of teleseismic P waves with a 5200-station array in Long Beach, California: Evidence for an abrupt boundary to Inner Borderland rifting

Abstract

We analyze teleseismic P waves from four Mw ≥ 6.5 earthquakes recorded by a petroleum industry survey in Long Beach, California. The survey used a 2-D array with up to 5200 seismometers, 120 m mean spacing, and 7 – 10 km aperture. At frequencies near 1 Hz, P wave travel times and amplitudes exhibit coherent lateral variations over scales as short as ~400 m, including locally delayed travel times and increased amplitudes at the crest of the Long Beach anticline. Deeper heterogeneity is indicated by P wave phase velocities that deviate from reference model predictions for events from southwestern azimuths. We postulate that a sharp northeastward increase in Moho depth from the Inner Borderland (IB) to mainland southern California causes the anomalous phase velocities. Elastic forward modeling finds the travel times are fit well by a Moho that dips 65° to the northeast and flattens ~10 km southwest of the Newport-Inglewood fault zone. Constraining the felsic thickness of mainland crust to 28 km requires an 8 km thick layer with a P-velocity of 7 km/s beneath it, which could result from basal accretion of former Farallon ocean crust or magmatic underplating during Miocene volcanism. Forward models with a 65° Moho dip predict a P-to-s conversion with a phase velocity of ~5 km/s. Deconvolution of the array's mean P wave signal isolates a similar later arriving phase. The steep crust thickness transition supports a locally abrupt boundary to IB rifting. Our results highlight the utility of dense short-period arrays for passive imaging at near surface to uppermost mantle depths.