Università Roma Tre

GLOBAL SEISMOLOGY, GRAVITY AND PHYSICAL PROPERTIES AT HIGH PRESSURE AND TEMPERATURES WILL BE TREATED. THE COURSE WILL INVOLVE A PRACTICAL PART WITH A TUTORIAL ON SEISMIC DATA PROCESSING AND A CRITICAL READING OF SELECTED REVIEW PAPERS ON A TOPIC BETWEEN: STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION OF THE CRUST, THE CONTINENTAL LITHOSPHERE, NATURE OF D’’, MANTLE PLUMES, CONSTRAINTS ON AVERAGE TEMPERATURE AND COMPOSITION OF THE MANTLE.
THE COURSE CAN BE HELD IN ENGLISH.

DETAILED PROGRAMME: INTRODUCTION: OVERVIEW OF EARTH'S INTERIOR STRUCTURE AND GEOPHYSICAL REMOTE-SENSING METHODOLOGIES: CURRENT KNOWLEDGE AND OPEN QUESTIONS. WHY AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH? MATHEMATICAL BACKGROUND: VECTOR OPERATIONS AND TRANSFORMATION, MATRIX ALGEBRA, VECTOR CALCULUS. BASIC SEISMOLOGY THEORY: WAVE EQUATION, HARMONIC WAVE SOLUTION, REFLECTION AND TRANSMISSION. STRESS AND STRAIN, CONSTITUTIVE EQ., SEISMIC WAVES, SNELL’S LAW (CRITICAL ANGLE, RAY PARAMETER, WAVEGUIDE, DIFFRACTION). SURFACE WAVES (DISPERSION, PHASE AND GROUP VELOCITY) AND NORMAL MODES. SEISMOLOGY AND EARTH STRUCTURE: BODY WAVES, TRAVEL-TIME STUDIES, SEISMIC PHASES, GLOBAL SEISMIC STRUCTURE. ANISOTROPY, ATTENUATION AND ANELASTICITY. COMPOSITION OF THE MANTLE AND CORE. SEISMIC TOMOGRAPHY: INVERSE THEORY, BODY-WAVE TOMOGRAPHY, SURFACE-WAVE TOMOGRAPHY. GRAVITY MODELLING AND GEOID: REVIEW OF GENERAL THEORY, ACQUISITION, PROCESSING OF SATELLITE DATA. GEOID AND GRAVITY INTERPRETATION. COMBINED SEISMIC AND GRAVITY INTERPRETATION: INSIGHT ON KNOWN AND UNKNOWNS OF THE EARTH’S THERMO-CHEMICAL STRUCTURE, HIGH P-T MATERIAL PROPERTIES, RHEOLOGY. THERMAL REGIME OF THE EARTH: THERMODYNAMICS PRINCIPLES, CONDUCTION, CONVECTION AND RADIATION, ADIABATIC GRADIENT, SOURCES OF HEAT AND RADIOACTIVITY, COOLING MODELS OF OCEANIC LITHOSPHERE, CONTINENTAL AND OCEANIC HEAT FLOW.

PRACTICAL PART: SEISMIC PROCESSING: TUTORIAL USING SAC (SEISMIC ANALYSIS CODE) ON PROCESSING OF SEISMIC DATA FOR EARTH’S INTERIOR STUDIES.

- LOWRIE, FUNDAMENTALS OF GEOPHYSICS, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, PP 1-375
- STACEY, PHYSICS OF THE EARTH, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
- LECTURE NOTES DISTRIBUTED DURING THE COURSE.