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Shallow Sedimentary Structure of the Brahmaputra Valley Constraint from Receiver Functions Analysis

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Abstract

In this study, receiver functions from ten Broadband seismograph stations on Cenozoic sediment formations of Brahmaputra valley and its neighboring region in northeastern part of India are determined. Receiver function traces from this region show delay in peak by 1–2.5 s and associated minor peaks with the direct P-phase peak. Based on such observation, we try to image sedimentary structure of the Brahmaputra valley plain, adjacent Shillong plateau and Himalayan foredeep region. An adapted hybrid global waveform inversion technique has been applied to extract sedimentary basin structure beneath each site. The sedimentary cover of the basin is about 0.5–6.5 km thick across the valley, 0.5–1.0 km on Shillong plateau and 2.0–5.0 km in nearby foredeep region. We have found that sedimentary thickness increases from SW to NE along the Brahmaputra valley and towards the Eastern Himalayan syntaxes. The estimated sediment thickness and S wave velocity structure agree well with the results of previous active source, gravity, and deep borehole studies carried out in this region. The thick crustal low velocity sediment cover in Brahmaputra valley is expected to amplify ground motions during earthquakes and therefore important for seismic hazard assessment of the region.

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Acknowledgments

We are thankful to the technical persons of India Meteorological Department for helping to get the earthquake data. SS greatly acknowledged Atul Kumar and Sunil Rohilla for fruitful discussion. I am also indebted to Prof. L. Zhu and two unanimous reviewers, who suggested numerous improvements to the manuscript. The GMT software package distributed by Wessel and Smith (1995) was used for mapping the figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Seismology Division, NCS, Ministry of Earth Sciences, New Delhi, India

    Sowrav Saikia & Sumer Chopra

  2. Institute of Seismological Research, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India

    Sumer Chopra

  3. Geoscience Division, NEIST (formerly RRL-Jorhat), Jorhat, Assam, India

    Santanu Baruah

  4. Department of Applied Geophysics, ISM, Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India

    Upendra K. Singh

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  1. Sowrav Saikia
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Correspondence to Sowrav Saikia.

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Saikia, S., Chopra, S., Baruah, S. et al. Shallow Sedimentary Structure of the Brahmaputra Valley Constraint from Receiver Functions Analysis. Pure Appl. Geophys. 174, 229–247 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00024-016-1371-3

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