By:
Brandon Schmandt
University of New Mexico
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Abstract
The seismic component of the EarthScope program includes >2500 broadband seismographs progressively deployed across the contiguous United States since 2005. The resulting data facilitate seismic imaging from the crust to deep within the mantle and are providing new insights into convective processes beneath North America such as the sinking and fragmentation of the Farallon slab and mantle upwelling beneath areas of intraplate volcanism such as the Yellowstone hotspot.
Recent imaging indicates that the heat source for Yellowstone magmatism is rooted in the lower mantle and a buoyant plume is rising through a gap between fragments of the Farallon slab. A relatively local increase in broadband seismograph coverage near Yellowstone has also improved imaging of the crustal scale magmatic system, which shows two concentrated low-velocity anomalies thought to represent melt reservoirs in the shallow and deep crust.