Joint Inversion of Body-Wave Arrival Times and Surface-Wave Dispersion for Three-Dimensional Seismic Structure Around SAFOD

We incorporate body-wave arrival time and surface-wave dispersion data into a joint inversion for three-dimensional P-wave and S-wave velocity structure of the crust surrounding the site of the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth. The contributions of the two data types to the inversion are controlled by the relative weighting of the respective equations. We find that the trade-off between fitting the two data types, controlled by the weighting, defines a clear optimal solution. Varying the weighting away from the optimal point leads to sharp increases in misfit for one data type with only modest reduction in misfit for the other data type. All the acceptable solutions yield structures with similar primary features, but the smaller-scale features change substantially. When there is a lower relative weight on the surface-wave data, it appears that the solution over-fits the body-wave data, leading to a relatively rough Vs model, whereas for the optimal weighting, we obtain a relatively smooth model that is able to fit both the body-wave and surface-wave observations adequately.