Imaging the crustal structure along the KCRT-2008 profile in the Southern Korean Peninsula using regularisation

Abstract

Information regarding crustal structure is important for geological and geophysical research. Several attempts have been made to delineate the crustal structure of the Korean Peninsula, but the resolution in these studies has generally been too low. To acquire detailed images of the regional subsurface structure, we applied seismic data processing tools that are commonly used in oil exploration to crustal refraction data recorded along the Korea Crust Research Team 2008 (KCRT-2008) profile at irregular intervals. To use conventional seismic data processing tools, the data should be sampled regularly in both time and space domains. In this study, we applied the matching pursuit interpolation technique to regularise the KCRT-2008 data in the space domain, followed by dip filtering to attenuate coherent noise. Then, Kirchhoff prestack depth migration was applied using both refracted and reflected waves to image the subsurface structure at higher signal-to-noise ratios and increase spatial resolution using far offset data. The migrated section shows the interfaces of three mid-crustal layers at depths of 14.27 and 24.37–25.34 km and the downwarped Moho at a depth range of 29.3–36.1 km.

In this study, high-resolution subsurface structures of the southern Korean Peninsula were delineated. To acquire images, we applied seismic data processing tools that are commonly used in oil exploration to irregularly sampled data after regularisation by matching pursuit interpolation.