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Teleseismic P-Wave Tomography of the New Guinea-Solomon Arc System

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Abstract

A P-wave tomographic traveltime inversion was applied to obtain a new model of seismic velocity anomalies beneath the New Guinea-Solomon arc system (PN-SL). The P-wave traveltime data, obtained from the revised International Seismological Center catalog, were recorded by 82 seismic stations in the PN-SL. Under the constraints of the epicenter distance, magnitude, and the number of stations recorded, 15009 effective P-wave traveltime data were selected from 2011 teleseismic events. The obtained model showed that the Solomon Sea Plate subducted beneath the New Britain Island along the New Britain Trench at an angle of >70° and that the slab can be traced down to a depth of approximately 800 km. Conversely, we cannot observe a high-velocity anomaly exhibited by the subducted Solomon Sea Plate in the deep mantle at the Trobriand Trench, and the slab stopped at a depth of <200 km. The double subduction of the Solomon Sea Plate strongly modified the subduction patterns of the early subducted Pacific and Australian plates in the mantle along the West Melanesian Trench and the Pocklington Trough, respectively. In addition, the subducted Solomon Sea Plate induced the melting of the upper mantle to form a low-velocity anomaly, which provided the deep dynamic source for the expansion of the Bismarck Sea. Based on the joint consideration of the tomography results and a petrological analysis, the low-velocity anomalies beneath the Solomon Sea and Woodlark Basin are closely related to the early subduction of the Pacific and Australian Plates, respectively.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Wessel & Smith (https://www.soest.hawaii.edu/gmt/) for the free use of GMT software, which was used to produce most of the figures used in the study. We are grateful for the algorithmic support of the traveltime tomography study from Dr. Fengxue Zhang at the Institute of Geophysics, China Earthquake Administration. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 91858215 and 41906048), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 201964015), and Laboratory for Marine Mineral Resources, Qingdao National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology (No. MMRZZ201801).

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  1. The two authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Submarine Geosciences and Prospecting Techniques, Ministry of Education, and College of Marine Geosciences, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, 266100, China

    Bing Feng, Hao Zhang, Wei Gong, Junhui Xing, Deyong Li, Chong Xu & Long An

  2. Laboratory for Marine Mineral Resources, Pilot National Laboratory Qingdao for Marine Science and Technology (Qingdao), Qingdao, 266237, China

    Wei Gong, Junhui Xing & Deyong Li

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  1. Bing Feng
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Correspondence to Wei Gong.

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Feng, B., Zhang, H., Gong, W. et al. Teleseismic P-Wave Tomography of the New Guinea-Solomon Arc System. J. Ocean Univ. China 21, 694–706 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11802-022-4626-x

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