Crustal anisotropy across eastern Tibet and surroundings modeled as a depth-dependent tilted hexagonally symmetric medium

Two types of surface wave anisotropy are observed regularly by seismologists but are only rarely interpreted jointly: apparent radial anisotropy, which is the difference in propagation speed between horizontally and vertically polarized waves inferred from Love and Rayleigh waves, and apparent azimuthal anisotropy, which is the directional dependence of surface wave speeds (usually Rayleigh waves). We show that a new data set of Love and Rayleigh wave isotropic phase speeds and Rayleigh wave azimuthal anisotropy observed within and surrounding eastern Tibet can be explained simultaneously by modeling the crust as a depthdependent tilted hexagonally symmetric (THS) medium. We specify the THS medium with depth-dependent hexagonally symmetric elastic tensors tilted and rotated through dip and strike angles and estimate these quantities using a Bayesian Monte Carlo inversion to produce a 3-D model of the crust and uppermost mantle on a 0.5° × 0.5° spatial grid. In the interior of eastern Tibet and in the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau, we infer a steeply dipping THS upper crustal medium overlying a shallowly dipping THSmedium in themiddle-to-lower crust. Such vertical stratification of anisotropy may reflect a brittle to ductile transition in which shallow fractures and faults control upper crustal anisotropy and the crystal-preferred orientation of anisotropic (perhaps micaceous) minerals governs the anisotropy of the deeper crust. In contrast, near the periphery of the Tibetan Plateau the anisotropic medium is steeply dipping throughout the entire crust, which may be caused by the reorientation of the symmetry axes of deeper crustal anisotropic minerals as crustal flows are rotated near the borders of Tibet.