Shear velocity structure in the Aegean area obtained by inversion of Rayleigh waves.

The purpose of this work is to derive a 3-D tomographic image of the shear wave velocity structure of the crust—uppermost mantle in the Aegean area using the group velocities of Rayleigh wave fundamental mode. The database consists of 185 regional earthquakes recorded at broad-band stations that were installed for a period of 6 month in the Aegean area within the framework of a large-scale experiment. In a previous work (Karagianni et al. 2002), an averaged group velocity has been determined using the method of frequency time analysis (FTAN) for each epicentre–station ray path and the data were used in order to determine the local group velocities for different periods over the area covered by the seismic ray paths. Taking into account additional resolution results obtained for the local group velocities, a grid of 0.5◦ was adopted for the Aegean area and a local dispersion curve was defined for each gridpoint. More than 80 local dispersion curves were finally inverted using a non-line