Moho depths beneath the European Alps from receiver functions of the AlpArray Seismic Network

The European Alps, formed by the interactions between the European and Adriatic plates, is a unique geological structure that has been extensively studied over the past decades. Despite numerous active and passive seismic investigations in the past, the crustal structure across the whole Alpine domain is somehow limited - mainly due to the limited number of seismometers available. The deployment of the AlpArray Seismic Network provides, which consisted of around 600 broadband seismometers and was operational from early 2016 till mid-2019, offers a unique opportunity to further update the current knowledge of the crustal structure beneath the European Alps by employing Receiver function (RF) analysis. 

RF method can provide an efficient way to image the structures and the discontinuities within the uppermost part of the Earth. We use teleseismic earthquakes with M≥5.5 and M<8.5 and epicentral distances ranging between 30 and 90 degrees that occurred during the operational time of the AlpArray Seismic Network. We compute RFs using a time-domain iterative deconvolution method. We apply quality control steps to both the original three-component waveforms and the calculated RFs to ensure that we only use high-quality signals. 

As of abstract submission, we are in the process of calculating the RFs. We also intend to perform a time to depth migration, in a 3D spherical coordinate system, to the RFs. This methodology, together with unprecedented data coverage, will provide us with migrated profiles that will image the structure of the crust and map the Moho depths at a great level of detail.