| Session Details | |
| Section | SE - Solid Earth Sciences |
| Session Title | Advances in Theory and Practice of Seismic Tomography and Waveform Inversion |
| Main Convener | Prof. Robert Geller (University of Tokyo, Japan) |
| Co-convener(s) | Dr. Li Zhao (Academia Sinica, Taiwan) Dr. Sebastien Chevrot (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, France) |
| Session Description | Recent progress in seismic imaging techniques which takes full advantage of all of the information contained in observed seismic waveforms has greatly contributed to our understanding of Earth structure on global and regional scales. Unlike ray-theoretical approximation, the use of complete and accurate synthetic seismograms and partial derivatives allows us to directly invert waveforms to obtain robust high-resolution images of Earth structure, including anelastic and anisotropic structure. There have recently been many noteworthy contributions to the inversions of Earth structure, from both theoretical and practical aspects, including data processing techniques as well as algorithms for accurate and efficient calculation of synthetics and partial derivatives. Waveform inversion and finite frequency tomography require enormous computational effort as compared to ray theory-based inversion of secondary data such as seismic travel times, but new algorithms and software, and the steady decline in the cost of computation, are leading to many promising new research initiatives. In this session we invite abstracts on new waveform inversion developments including, but not limited to, advanced techniques on wave propagation modeling, innovative wavefield storage techniques, and improvement to the algorithms for solving the inverse problem itself. We also invite abstracts on Earth structure models obtained by applying these techniques. |