Eikonal Travel-time Tomography of the Los Angeles Basin

Eli Bird, Ettore Biondi, Robert W. Clayton, & Zhongwen Zhan

Submitted September 7, 2025, SCEC Contribution #14733, 2025 SCEC Annual Meeting Poster #TBD

While great strides have been made in earth imaging through full-waveform inversion, such models remain computationally expensive. This can be limiting, particularly as one approaches high frequency data, and as such there is still value in tomographic studies which focus solely on arrival time data. We develop a lightweight Eikonal travel-time tomography code that can jointly invert body and surface wave traveltime data. One target for inversion is the Los Angeles basin and the surrounding region. Arrivals of earthquakes at stations in the LA basin have been extensively catalogued, particularly on stations operated by the Southern California Seismic Network (SCSN), and we use these existing picks in a preliminary inversion. Further, we pick phases arriving on the denser Community Seismic Network (CSN), which may be used in tandem with the SCSN data. We will eventually perform a broader integration of temporary deployments into our inversion.

Citation
Bird, E., Biondi, E., Clayton, R. W., & Zhan, Z. (2025, 09). Eikonal Travel-time Tomography of the Los Angeles Basin. Poster Presentation at 2025 SCEC Annual Meeting.

Related Projects & Working Groups
Seismology