From ridge to trench: seismic evolution of Pacific oceanic crust

In this project you will study the evolution of the upper oceanic crust through its entire life cycle in the eastern Pacific - from the East Pacific Rise where it forms to the subduction zone at the Middle Americas Trench, including continuous transects of several hundred km. You will work with several multichannel seismic reflection datasets where the streamer recorded sound waves that have interacted strongly with seismic layer 2 enabling us to constrain sound speed and density. You will use downward continuation to simulate an experiment carried out on the seabed, and then use a combination of the traveltimes of seismic energy and their waveforms to investigate how the properties of layer 2 vary with age. Ultimately you will interpret the results in terms of fluid fluxes and their variation across the plate.