Joint Inversion of Surface Waves Dispersion and Receiver Function at Cuba Seismic Stations

Joint inversion of Rayleigh wave group velocity dispersion and receiver functions have been used to estimate the crust and upper mantle structure at eight seismic stations in Cuba. Receiver functions have been computed from teleseismic recordings of earthquakes at epicentral (angular) distances between 30o and 90o and Rayleigh wave group velocity dispersion have been taken from a surface-wave tomography study of the Caribbean area. The thickest crust (around 27 km) is found at Cascorro (CCC), Soroa (SOR), Moa (MOA) and Maisi (MAS) stations while the thinnest crust (around 18 km) is found at stations Rio Carpintero (RCC) and Guantanamo Bay (GTBY), in the southeastern of Cuba; this result is in agreement with the southward gradual thinning of the crust revealed by previous studies. The inversion shows a crystalline crust with S-wave velocity between 2.9 km/s and 3.9 km/s and at the crust-mantle transition zone the shear wave velocity varies from 3.9 km/s and 4.3 km/s. The lithospheric thickness varies from 74 km, in the youngest lithosphere, to 200 km in the middle of the Cuban island. Evidences of a subducted slab possibly belonging to the Caribbean plate are present below the stations Las Mercedes (LMG), RCC and GTBY and a thicker slab is present below the SOR station. (author)