The NARS-DEEP project

The NARS-DEEP project involves the deployment of broadband seismological stations in Russia, Belarus and the Ukraine. Six stations were installed in 1995, two in 1997, and more stations were to be installed from 1998 onwards. The NARS-DEEP project was initiated as a temporary deployment, but funding from the European Community enabled the stations to become permanent. In this paper we present first results of the NARS-DEEP project. A surface waveform inversion for the upper mantle structure along a profile from Egypt to Spitsbergen shows evidence for strong variations in the shear-velocity structure for the different tectonic units. The most striking features of the model comprise strong lithospheric anisotropy beneath the Eastern Mediterranean and a lithospheric thickness of approximately 200 km beneath the shield areas. The crustal structure beneath the seismic station in St. Petersburg was investigated using the receiver function method. The results of a Monte Carlo inversion for the receiver functions of this station show evidence for a sedimentary layer with a thickness of less than 1 km overlying an upper crustal layer extending to a depth of approximately 16 km. The Moho depth cannot be resolved from the receiver functions of this station.