Seismological Study of the Upper Mantle Transition Zone Using Broadband Waveform Modeling

Several well-known tomographic studies published in the 1990's (van der Hilst et al., 1991; Fukao et al., 1992) captured a large-scale subhorizontal high velocity anomaly at the bottom of the upper mantle in the northwestern Pacific. These models suggest that a large volume of subducted slab is stagnant in the transition zone.