Shear wave velocity model of the ABANICO formation underlying The santiago City Metropolitan Area, chile, using ambient seismic noise tomography

Summary The seismic response of the Santiago City, the capital of Chile with more than 5.5 million inhabitants, is controlled by the properties of the shallower quaternary deposits and the impedance contrast with the underlying Abanico formation, among other factors. In this study, we process continuous records of ambient seismic noise to perform an ambient seismic noise tomography with the aim of defining the shallower structure of the Abanico formation underneath the densely populated metropolitan area of Santiago, Chile. The seismic signals were recorded by a network consisting of 29 broadband seismological stations and 12 accelerograph stations, located in a 35 × 35 km2 quadrant. We used the average coherency of the vertical components to calculate dispersion curves from 0.1 to 5 Hz and Bootstrap resampling to estimate the variance of the travel times. The reliable frequency band of the dispersion curves was defined by an empirical method based on sign normalization of the coherency real part. The ambient noise tomography was solved on a domain discretized into 256 2 × 2 km2 cells. Using a regularized weighted least squares inversion, we inverted the observed travel-times between stations, assuming straight ray paths, in order to obtain 2D phase velocity maps from 0.2 Hz to 1.1 Hz, linearly spaced every 0.05 Hz, in 157 of the 256 square cells of the domain. In each square cell with information, dispersion curves were assembled and used to invert shear wave velocity profiles, which were interpolated using the ordinary Kriging method to obtain a 3D shear wave velocity model valid from 0.6 to 5 km depth. The 3D velocity model shows that the Abanico formation is stiffer in the south of the study area with larger velocity anomalies towards the shallower part of the model. The value of the shear wave velocity narrows with depth, reaching an average value of 3.5 km/s from 3 to 5 km depth.

Abanico East Formation: petrology and geochemistry of volcanic rocks behind the Cenozoic arc front in the Andean Cordillera, central Chile (33°50'S)

The stratigraphy, chemistry and age of rocks assigned to the eastern portion of the Abanico Formation exposed along the El Volcán river valley, Principal Cordillera east of Santiago (30º50'S/70º12'-70º5'W), are reported and discussed. This ca. 3,300 m thick succession is mainly composed of basalts, basaltic andesites and volcaniclastic rocks. 40Ar/39Ar radiometric dates on plagioclase from the lava flows yield Oligocene-lower Miocene ages with a maximum age of 34.3 ±0.4 Ma for the lower part and a plateau age of 21.4±1.0 Ma for the upper part of the succession. The lava flows show calc-alkaline affinities and have chemical characteristics that are typical of arc volcanic rocks erupted in an active continental margin. A temporal chemical evolution in the sequence is indicated by upward increases in concentrations of LILE and LREE elements and LaN/YbN ratios. This pattern can be attributed to increasing contributions of fluids derived from the subducted lithosphere with time. A chemical comparison of these rocks with Oligocene-lower Miocene volcanic rocks from the Cerro Abanico and Chacabuco areas on the western border of the Principal Cordillera, east of Santiago, and at the northern end of the Central Depression reveals west to east compositional variations. From west to east these variations include: (1) increasing LILE and LREE concentrations, LaN/YbN ratios and Sr and Nd initial isotopic ratios, and (2) decreasing LILE/HFSE and LREE/HFSE ratios. These pattern can be attributed to a west to east decrease in the contribution of slab derived fluids and increase in the influence of crustal contamination processes.