PASSIVE TOMOGRAPHY OF THE CARIBBEAN USING SURFACE WAVES EXTRACTED FROM AMBIENT NOISE

The Caribbean plate has been proven difficult to study due to the lack of data, because there were few instruments to collect data as a result of the poor land exposure in the region. Recently the installation of seismic stations around the Caribbean has helped to expand the amount of data, now there is more information available to us that enables us to understand the processes present in the Caribbean plate. In this research we use a technique called ambient noise tomography in order to fully utilize the data that these stations have been providing. This method uses background noise in order to create a tomography using surface waves. In similar previous studies, good tomographic images of this plate have not been able to be created due to the lack of data, bad quality or it has simply been overlooked because the study covered such a broad area. It is important to create good tomographic images of the Caribbean plate in order to be able to visualize things such as the boundaries of the plate or acquire velocity information on the path of earthquake waves to the station. This new method aims to create a better tomography of the area by using more information than previous work. Over six months of ambient noise from different stations around the Caribbean was used. By processing this information we can extract low period surface waves (<40s periods) that help in imaging of the shallow internal structure of the Caribbean plate.