Lithospheric structure beneath northern Mississippi embayment from joint inversion of surface wave dispersion and receiver functions

The northern Mississippi Embayment is characterized by relatively high seismicity at the New Madrid Seismic Zone. Although many studies have focused on specific earthquakes or on the structure at specific locations, the mechanism of the earthquake process has remained an enigma. As part of the Northern Embayment Lithosphere Experiment, we focus on high resolution surface-wave tomography of Love and Rayleigh, phase and group velocities for a study region bounded by 34-40 N latitude and 85-94 W longitude for periods from 2 to 50 seconds by cross-correlating ambient noise from BH channels of the Transportable Array of EarthScope. To test the usefulness of the dispersion, we perform a joint inversion of dispersion and teleseismic P-wave receiver functions for stations in the region. At a few locations, we are able to test the resulting models by comparing predicted to observed broadband recordings of local earthquakes. At these few locations, we find good agreement and also evidence that the Moho is a gradient rather than a sharp discontinuity.