Professor Keith Priestley

My research focuses on the structure and mechanical behaviour of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle.  I use seismology to construct images of the internal structure of the Earth which can then be used to test hypotheses of the Earth’s evolution and dynamics. Although my research has depended heavily on publicly-available seismic data, much of my work is based on data collected in my field experiments in Iceland, New Zealand, Hawaii, Greece, Turkey, Chile and much of the Middle East and central Asia.  I combine my seismic results with advances in geochemistry, petrology, and mineral physics to relate the measured seismic wave speeds to temperature and composition. This has allowed me to produce thickness maps of the lithosphere, the cold boundary layer near the Earth’s surface which controls the Earth’s heat loss and the tectonics of the oceans and continents. These lithospheric maps show how extensive regions of thick lithosphere have controlled the geometry of continental deformation; they have also provided significant new insights on the formation and evolution of the continents.

Current research focus:

• Mapping upper mantle velocity and anisotropy with large surface wave data sets

• Relationship between upper shear-wavespeed, temperature and rheology of the upper mantle,

• Structure of the lithosphere and its influence on the evolution of the continents

• Lithospheric-scale processes of the Arabian-Eurasian and Indo-Eurasian collision zones.

CAM2016 is a group of global upper mantle models based on multi-mode surface wave tomography. These models include an upper mantle Vsv model CAM2016Vsv derived from the waveform modelling of ~2 million vertical component Rayleigh waveforms, an upper mantle Vsh model CAM2016Vsh from the waveform modelling of ~0.5 million transverse component Love waveforms, a radial anisotropic model CAM2016Xi derived from the waveform modelling of ~0.25 million Rayleigh and Love waveforms, and a lithospheric thickness model CAM2016Litho. All models are defined on a 2 degree by 2 degree grid. Vsv and Vsh models are given for several lateral smoothing lengths. The models determined with the shorter smoothing length are applicable to the shallower depths while the models determined with the larger smoothing length are more appropriate to the deeper depths. The 1D reference models for CAM2016 are at http://ds.iris.edu/ds/products/emc-sprem/