Geophys. J. Int. (2023) 234, 1447–1462 https://doi.org/10.

1093/gji/ggad140
Advance Access publication 2023 March 29
GJI Seismology

Towards the geological parametrization of seismic tomography

Victor C. Tsai , Christian Huber and Colleen A. Dalton

Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA. E-mail: victor tsai@brown.edu

Accepted 2023 March 27. Received 2022 August 31; in original form 2023 March 14

SUMMARY
Seismic tomography is a cornerstone of geophysics and has led to a number of important

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discoveries about the interior of the Earth. However, seismic tomography remains plagued by
the large number of unknown parameters in most tomographic applications. This leads to the
inverse problem being underdetermined and requiring significant non-geologically motivated
smoothing in order to achieve unique answers. Although this solution is acceptable when using
tomography as an explorative tool in discovery mode, it presents a significant problem to use of
tomography in distinguishing between acceptable geological models or in estimating geolog-
ically relevant parameters since typically none of the geological models considered are fit by
the tomographic results, even when uncertainties are accounted for. To address this challenge,
when seismic tomography is to be used for geological model selection or parameter estimation
purposes, we advocate that the tomography can be explicitly parametrized in terms of the
geological models being tested instead of using more mathematically convenient formulations
like voxels, splines or spherical harmonics. Our proposition has a number of technical diffi-
culties associated with it, with some of the most important ones being the move from a linear
to a non-linear inverse problem, the need to choose a geological parametrization that fits each
specific problem and is commensurate with the expected data quality and structure, and the
need to use a supporting framework to identify which model is preferred by the tomographic
data. In this contribution, we introduce geological parametrization of tomography with a few
simple synthetic examples applied to imaging sedimentary basins and subduction zones, and
one real-world example of inferring basin and crustal properties across the continental United
States. We explain the challenges in moving towards more realistic examples, and discuss the
main technical difficulties and how they may be overcome. Although it may take a number
of years for the scientific program suggested here to reach maturity, it is necessary to take
steps in this direction if seismic tomography is to develop from a tool for discovering plausible
structures to one in which distinct scientific inferences can be made regarding the presence or
absence of structures and their physical characteristics.
Key words: Inverse theory; Tomography; Seismic tomography; Theoretical seismology.

1 I N T RO D U C T I O N
Seismic tomography, the imaging of 3-D Earth structure with seis-
mic waves, has expanded enormously since the early studies of
Aki et al. (1977) and Dziewonski et al. (1977). It has resulted in
countless discoveries including deep subducting slabs (van der Hilst
et al. 1997), lower mantle large low-shear-wave velocity provinces
(Su et al. 1994) and numerous oil-producing reservoirs (Karcher
1987). Seismic tomography has also resulted in more controver-
sial findings, such as the debated seismic manifestation of mantle
plumes (Montelli et al. 2004, 2006; van der Hilst & de Hoop 2005,
2006; Hwang et al. 2011), the debated interpretation of near-trench
seismic anisotropy as trench parallel mantle flow (Russo & Silver
1994; Song & Kawakatsu 2012) and the debated discovery of shear
waves travelling through the inner core (Cao et al. 2005; Shearer
et al. 2011).
A primary reason that there remain controversies about the inter-
pretation of seismic imaging results is that the images are inevitably
smoothed, typically as a consequence of inadequate data coverage,
and thus require interpretation as to whether the images approxi-
mate the anticipated geological structures or not. Given this issue,
a number of studies have attempted to address the interpretation
problem in a variety of ways. A number of purely mathematical ap-
proaches to improving interpretability despite the need to regularize
inversions have been proposed, including techniques based on sin-
gular value decomposition (Jackson 1972), well-posed stochastic
extensions (Jordan & Franklin 1971), incorporating a priori infor-
mation (Jackson 1979; Jordan & Sverdrup 1981), total variation


C The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Royal Astronomical Society. This is an Open Access

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1447
1448 V.C. Tsai et al.
regularization (Rudin et al. 1992), subspace inversion (Bodin &
Sambridge 2009; Fang et al. 2019), sparsity regularization (Candes
& Wakin 2008; Candes et al. 2008) and homogenization in upscaling
(Backus 1962; Capdeville et al. 2010). In contrast, other approaches
have proposed to address the interpretation problem by posing the
problem with different constraints. For example, Nataf & Ricard
(1996) performed geodynamic simulations to predict seismic data
and compare with tomographic results; Zelt & Smith (1992) and
Zelt (1999) posed minimum parameter inversions with as simple of
a geometry as possible; Magistrale et al. (2000) created a rule-based
reference model for basins in southern California based on fitting
tomographic and geotechnical data; Sun & Li (2015) used clustering
to improve the geological interpretability of gravity and crosswell
seismic data; Khan et al. (2008), Giraud et al. (2017), Koelemeijer
et al. (2018) and Astic & Oldenburg (2019) used a Bayesian frame-
work to estimate geodynamic and petrophysical parameters from
seismic, gravity, magnetic and electromagnetic data, respectively;
many studies in the exploration seismology context like Dadash-
pour et al. (2008), Dessa et al. (2009) and Hubbard et al. (2014)
used a combination of migrated seismic reflection and refraction
data and well logs to subsequently infer structural geology models,
including inferring reservoir parameters; Arnold & Curtis (2018)
used interrogation theory to pose specific geological questions us-
ing seismic data; a number of groundwater studies such as Linde
et al. (2015) and Laloy et al. (2018) imposed statistical constraints
to improve the realism of inverted hydrological networks; and Muir
& Tsai (2020a) introduced a geometric level-set parametrization for
tomography that more naturally allows for sharp geological bound-
aries to be imaged. Although all of these studies make progress
towards better interpretation, none of them solve the underlying is-
sue that the information provided by seismic tomographic imaging
is not the information that is usually of most interest from the point
of view of the geological processes involved.
To more directly take steps in the direction of better interpretabil-
ity of seismic tomography, here we introduce the concept of geo-
logical parametrization of tomography, a natural extension of the
geometric parametrization of Muir & Tsai (2020a) and to some
extent a generalization of the Zelt & Smith (1992) philosophy. In
Section 2, we describe some of the main issues with standard to-
mography parametrizations. In Section 3, we introduce the central
idea of geological parametrization of tomography. We then provide
2 simple synthetic examples of the approach applied to sedimen-
tary basins and subduction zones and one real-world example of the
approach applied to estimating basin and crustal properties across
the continental United States. In Section 4, we delve into some
of the main differences between geological tomography and more
standard approaches and explain some of the main challenges of
geological tomography that must be dealt with that are unique from
the challenges of other approaches. In Section 5, we summarize the
findings.
2 T H E I S S U E W I T H S TA N D A R D
T O M O G R A P H Y PA R A M E T R I Z AT I O N S
The majority of tomographic inversions parametrize the region of
interest in terms of mathematically convenient structures such as
pixels, voxels, grid cells, Voronoi cells, splines or spherical har-
monics (Lay & Wallace 1995; Liu & Gu 2012; Fang et al. 2019).
Typically, a very large number of cells or degrees of freedom are
allowed in order to capture the most general possible structure. The
philosophy implicitly favoured in this decision is one of maximiz-
ing the opportunity for discovery. Specifically, this parametrization
choice maximizes the range of specific structures that could result
from inversion and minimizes the potential bias from any a pri-
ori expectations for what structures may exist. When knowledge is
poor or potentially unreliable, as it is when one is attempting to im-
age a structure for the first time, this type of general mathematical
parametrization is an excellent choice and has a solid epistemolog-
ical justification (Curd & Cover 1998).
However, this maximal degree of freedom philosophy is not with-
out its issues and limitations. Perhaps the two most significant issues
are that (1) a unique solution often does not exist for the imaging
problem with many degrees of freedom and (2) the solutions can
be unphysical or unable to distinguish between physical alterna-
tives that are of interest, thereby making it very difficult to infer
relevant geological or geodynamic parameters. The first problem,
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which is also known as the underdetermined problem, is due to the
limitations of the imaging data (e.g. finite number and uneven distri-
bution of events and stations in the seismological imaging context)
and is often dealt with using regularization or smoothing techniques
(Aster et al. 2013), which reduces the effective number of model
parameters to be solved for by imposing smoothness or continuity
constraints on the model. This approach is successful in reducing
the underdeterminism that underlies the imaging problem, but often
causes the solution to be unphysical or ambiguous with regards to
plausible alternatives (second problem). Many physical structures
are not expected to be smooth or otherwise satisfy the continuity
properties that are imposed in the regularization process. More-
over, even when the number of grid cells is large and the amount
of smoothing modest, there are often artefacts of the mathematical
parametrization in the final image that do not satisfy certain physi-
cal principles that may be expected (e.g. Lin et al. 2014; Hosseini
et al. 2020).
To be concrete about these two limitations to standard tomo-
graphic imaging, we provide a simple geologically motivated ex-
ample in Fig. 1. The example is specific to imaging a sedimentary
basin with traveltime tomography but is archetypical of a broader
class of problems. In this example, a sedimentary basin is assumed
to form due to a series of horst and graben faulting events and de-
position events. The velocities within each layer are assumed to be
constant, and only first-arrival P-wave traveltimes are assumed to be
measured. Fig. 1(a) depicts the series of four geological events that
occurred to form the eventual structure to be imaged using con-
ventional transmission straight-ray traveltime tomography. To be
specific about the imaging capabilities, in this example we assume
there are 50 stations placed uniformly along the surface and as-
sume there are 39 sources evenly spaced along the other boundaries
(Fig. 1b). Although this setup is idealized, it has the features needed
to demonstrate some of the limitations of standard parametriza-
tions. In this example, there are 1950 (39 × 50) ray paths and also
1950 pieces of traveltime data, and the ray path density is shown in
Fig. 1(b) for a model that is pixelated with a grid that is 200 by 100
pixels. Although the ray path density is relatively high in the upper
portion of the model, with an average of more than 20 crossing
rays crossing each pixel, performing an inversion with the 20000
pixels is clearly underdetermined since 20 000 is far in excess of the
1950 pieces of data, a result that is well understood from an inverse
theory standpoint (e.g. Aster et al. 2013). Even in the upper portion
of the model where the ray path density is high, there is significant
trade-off between model parameters due to equal sensitivity along
each ray path. As a result, the unsmoothed tomographic problem is a
linear inverse problem but with a nearly singular matrix inverse that

(a) x1
s1
Graben 1 v0
h1
Deposition 1
x3
s2
Graben 2
v2
v1
Deposition 2
Figure 1. Schematic for sedimentary basin process and standard inversion. (a) Schematic shows a series of 4 geological events that form a sedimentary basin.
(b) Ray path density (colours) for the 50 stations (red circles) and 39 sources (cyan squares) along the boundary. (c) Schematic result of a smoothed traditional
tomographic inversion with 200 grid cells. (d) Schematic result of a more coarsely discretized traditional tomographic inversion with 50 grid cells.
leads to a lack of a practical solution. There are two potential stan-
dard approaches. One can either discretize the model less finely or
apply smoothing, both of which reduce the effective number of pa-
rameters and thus reduce the underdeterminism of the inversion. As
shown schematically in Figs 1(c) and (d), though, neither solution is
able to capture key features of the original geological model. Most
problematic is that the sharp geological boundaries between faulted
blocks are no longer apparent, either having been smoothed away or
displaying primarily the pixilation of the less discretized grid cell
parametrization. Importantly from an inference and epistemolog-
ical perspective, the fault locations, fault offsets and depositional
amounts are not determined nor easily estimated with the resulting
images. Even seismic observations with better sensitivity to strong
velocity gradients than the path-integrated traveltimes used in this
example, such as scattered and reflected waves, suffer from finite
resolution, which would introduce error into estimates of geologi-
cal parameters. Thus, potentially some of the information that is of
most interest and why the imaging might have been performed in
the first place are not straightforwardly estimated.
3 G E O L O G I C A L PA R A M E T R I Z AT I O N
OF TOMOGRAPHY
3.1 The central idea and requirements
Given the desire to be able to more directly infer geologically and
geodynamically interesting parameters and the deficiencies of stan-
dard mathematically gridded tomography, here we propose a new
Geological tomography 1449
x2 (b) Raypath Density
20
15
10
5
0
(c) Smoothed Inversion
x4
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(d) More Discretized Inversion
framework for imaging based on geological parametrizations. This
framework builds naturally on a previous ‘geometric tomography’
parametrization introduced by Muir & Tsai (2020a) in which the to-
mographic model is parametrized in terms of geometric boundaries.
Comparisons between all three versions for parametrizing tomog-
raphy (i.e. standard, geometric and geological) are shown later in
this section.
The central requirement of the geological parametrization frame-
work is for the parameters of the tomographic problem to be directly
related to the geological processes responsible for the structure be-
ing imaged. As an example, for the sedimentary basin example
shown in Fig. 1, the most natural parameters for the geological
parametrization would be the locations, orientations and offsets on
the faults, the amount of sediment deposited, and the seismic ve-
locities of each of the geological layers. As we will discuss later
(Section 4.1), such a parametrization is inevitably a simplification
of reality and also makes certain assumptions (such as constant
layer velocities and how they relate to the depositional events) that
may in some cases be poor. Thus, an important challenge in us-
ing such a parametrization is ensuring that the assumptions are
commensurate with the a priori knowledge available (Section 4.1).
Explicitly choosing a parametrization that is geologically informed
distinguishes the procedure from the interrogation theory approach
(Arnold & Curtis 2018; Zhao et al. 2022) in which tomographic
gridding is still used but specific geological questions are posed.
This geological approach is also distinguished from purely geomet-
ric approaches (Zelt & Smith 1992; Muir & Tsai 2020b) by hav-
ing parameters that are not solely geometric, like fault slip (which
can affect multiple aspects of the geometry simultaneously or other
1450 V.C. Tsai et al.
physical variables that affect the velocities in a non-geometric way).
We discuss the relation with other approaches further in Section
4.6. We emphasize that in using the geological parametrization ad-
vocated here, the nature of the specific geological parametrization
(i.e. what the unknown parameters are) will be strongly dependent
on the geological setting as well as the a priori information known
about the situation (see Section 4.1 for further details).
A second requirement that we impose with this imaging frame-
work is that the geological parameters be distinguishable by the
available data and imaging method, at least in theory, as could
be explored for example using synthetic data. As a simple exam-
ple, if synthetic tests or physical arguments demonstrate that the
presence or absence of a fault in a particular location cannot be
distinguished from the data (e.g. due to insufficient ray or station
coverage), then such a fault should not be included as a possibility
within this framework and its parameters should not be inverted for.
The ability to distinguish such a fault feature may depend on other
choices made about the parametrization. This requirement ensures
that the tomographic inversion is well posed, without a significant
null space. This condition further limits the types of models that
can be expressed within this framework, and the limitations may
be more or less severe depending on the availability of a priori
information. We also return to this point in Section 4.1. This second
requirement distinguishes the suggested approach from the more
general related idea of using forward modelling, for example us-
ing geodynamic numerical software, to predict seismic velocities
and subsequently compare them with seismic data or tomographic
models (e.g. Nataf & Ricard 1996; Khan et al. 2008; Koelemeijer
et al. 2018). In those works, the underlying model parameters are
not expected to be uniquely determined, with significant trade-offs
between them that may be explored in a Bayesian sense or explored
only to a very limited extent. In such approaches, a main question
is in understanding how the parameters of interest may or may not
be sensitive to the (seismic) data being analysed. In contrast, in our
suggested methodology we advocate for the parametrization to be
chosen such that uncertainties and trade-offs are minimal and arise
primarily from the implementation of solving the inverse problem
with noisy or imperfect data. The difference may be subtle, but
we believe that making difficult choices in the simplification of the
geological model to be determined is essential to this type of ge-
ological tomography being useful (and serves a different purpose
than the geodynamic comparisons that have been done previously).
Not satisfying this second requirement would necessitate mathe-
matical regularization which would be counter to the central goal
of the geological parametrization approach.
As a result of the second requirement, rather than solve for first-
principles parameters such as chemical composition or thermal
characteristics, we advocate for solving for parameters that directly
influence the imaging results such as seismic velocities (rather than
composition) and fault offsets (rather than driving forces) except
when robust theory can uniquely translate more fundamental vari-
ables into directly observable ones (see Section 3.3 for an example).
As a further example of the advocated philosophy, in the sedimen-
tary basin example, total fault offsets and total depositional amounts
are the parameters to invert for, rather than faulting rates and dura-
tions and depositional rates and durations since, within the context
of the provided information and assumed model, there is com-
plete trade-off between rates and durations, with only the product
constrained. Again, there is a subtle distinction, and which param-
eters are directly distinguishable depends on the degree of a priori
knowledge, the physics considered and the quality and quantity
of the data. However, we believe this choice is a good compromise
between the fully unconstrained approach of traditional tomography
and the fully geodynamic approach proposed by others (e.g. Nataf
& Ricard 1996; Khan et al. 2008) when the framework is to be used
to robustly and quantitatively estimate geological information.
3.2 Example sedimentary basin inversion with geological
tomography
Before discussing the various challenges inherent in proceeding
with the geological tomography framework as proposed, we first
present a proof-of-principle demonstration of its implementation as
applied to the simple sedimentary basin example from Fig. 1 and
compare the results with those of traditional tomography and ge-
ometric tomography. Although this example is idealized in many
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ways, including the 2-D nature of the problem, the dense spac-
ing of stations and sources and the assumed uniform velocities of
the different layers, it nonetheless nicely highlights the differences
between the different approaches, including both the expected ad-
vantages as well as some of the challenges of geological tomography
that are distinct from using more traditional approaches. For the ex-
ample shown in Fig. 2, we further assume that the graben forming
faults have a set angle from the horizontal that is known a priori (for
example, due to assumed Andersonian faulting (Anderson 1905) or
other observational constraints independent from the seismic data
to be used for imaging) and that these faults continue with constant
slip to infinite depth. With these additional assumptions, there are
10 parameters that uniquely determine the ‘geological’ model: the
four horizontal surface locations of the two pairs of faults (x1 , x2 ,
x3 , x4 ), the 2 vertical offsets for the 2 graben forming events (s1 , s2 ),
the 1 thickness of the first deposition event (h1 ) and the 3 seismic
velocities of the background block (v0 ), the first sediment layer (v1 )
and the second sediment layer (v2 ) (see Fig. 1a). In this example, we
assume the second deposition event to fill to form a flat horizontal
free surface so that the thickness of the second deposition event is
not a free parameter to be solved for. In Fig. 2(a), we show one pos-
sible specific realization which we then calculate synthetic P-wave
traveltime data for (Fig. 3a).
Inversions of this noise-free traveltime data set using the three
different tomographic parametrizations are shown in Figs 2(b)–(d),
with Fig. 2(b) showing the traditional traveltime tomography result
(parameters are 200 unknown gridded velocities), Fig. 2(c) showing
an inversion with the depths of the 2 geometric boundaries being
the unknowns (parameters are the 18 unknown depths plus 3 un-
known velocities), and Fig. 2(d) showing an inversion with the same
10 parameters that are used to generate the geological model. For
the traditional tomography result, smoothing is required to obtain
a unique solution, and standard Tikhonov regularization is utilized
with both zeroth and first-order regularization terms added (see
Supporting Information). For the geometric tomography result, an
iterative linearized inversion is performed, with updates alternating
between the boundary depths and internal velocities. The geometric
inversion is highly non-linear, and the final solution obtained is sen-
sitive to the initial guess, due to many local minima (see Supporting
Information).
Finally, for the geological parametrization, the inversion is per-
formed stepwise, with a slightly different set of 12 ‘stencil’ pa-
rameters (see Fig. 3b) that is then mapped onto the original 10
parameters (see Fig. 3c). This choice is made because the 12 pa-
rameters with a fixed stencil are more directly relatable to the data
and there is a convenient one-to-one mapping between those 12
 Geological tomography 1451

Slowness
(1/v)
Parameters
10 input geologic parameters:
(a)
v0=3 km/s, v1=1 km/s
'True' Model v2=0.5 km/s, h1=4 km
Realization s1=6 km, s2=1.5 km
x1=1 km, x2=17 km,
x3=4 km, x4=19 km

(b)
Traditional 200 gridded velocities,
1 for each 1x1 km pixel
Gridded
Inversion

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18 depths + 3 velocities:
(c)
9 depths for each of 2 boundaries
Geometric v0=3.28±0.05 km/s
Inversion v1=0.86±0.01 km/s
(e.g. Muir & Tsai 2020)
v2=0.50±0.01 km/s

10 recovered geologic parameters:

(d)
v0=3.000±0.000 km/s, v1=1.01±0.02 km/s
Geologic v2=0.498±0.003 km/s, h1=4.00±0.01 km
Inversion s1=6.00±0.01 km, s2=1.50±0.01 km
x1=1.1±0.2 km, x2=17.2±0.6 km,
x3=3.8±0.6 km, x4=18.9±0.2 km

Figure 2. Comparison between three different inversion parametrizations for a sedimentary basin example. (a) Example of a specific realization of geological
events to form a sedimentary basin to be imaged (input model). (b) Inversion with traditional gridded parametrization. (c) Inversion with geometric parametriza-
tion (e.g. Muir & Tsai 2020a). (d) Inversion with geological parametrization. Estimated parameters are listed to the right, with (a) listing the parameters of the
input model. Uncertainties are estimated as described in the Supporting Information.

parameters and the 10 original parameters (note that 4 of the pa-
rameters are identical, 2 new binary parameters are introduced to
map the position of the faults onto the real axis and the other pa-
rameters have clear relationships). There are multiple ways in which
inversion for the geological model could have been performed. One
could have performed a full Bayesian MCMC inversion or a gra-
dient based iterative solver (see Section 4 for further discussion),
but for this example we choose to show a step-wise best-fitting
inversion in which parameters are solved for in a specific order to
minimize the amount of trade-off between other parameters. For ex-
ample, given the source–receiver array geometry, the background
velocity v0 is easily determined with low error and essentially no
trade-off with other parameters and is therefore the first parameter
solved for (see Fig. 3d). Two of the horizontal locations of the faults
(x1 ’ and x4 ’) and the shallowest layer velocity v2 are the next most
easily determined parameters, after which x2 ’ and x3 ’ are deter-
mined. The inversion routine becomes more complex at this stage
but the thicknesses h1 ’, h2 ’, h3 ’ and stencil flags b1 and b2 are deter-
minable along with v1 (see Supporting Information), finishing the
inversion for the 12 stencil parameters. Once these 12 stencil pa-
rameters are determined, the 10 original geological parameters are
uniquely determined (see Fig. 3c). This method of estimating pa-
rameters also allows for estimation of each parameter’s errors (see
Section 4.3 for more details) and it reveals, in this case, that there
is a very different magnitude of error on the different parameters
(see uncertainties listed in Fig. 2(d)). For example, with the method
described above, the fault horizontal location errors for x2 and x3 are
close to 1 km, related to the spacing of the sources, whereas the fault
horizontal location errors for x1 and x4 are an order of magnitude
smaller, and related more to the spacing of the stations. The fact
that some geological parameters (e.g. locations x1 and x4 ) are very
accurately determined, even though other parts of the inversion are
less effective, is a general characteristic of this type of inversion
that may be desirable. We note that the inversion routine could be
added to and the error on some of the parameters further reduced,
for example by adding a perturbative routine after the routine as
described. However, given our focus on the new parametrization
rather than the specific inversion procedure, we do not perform
this extra step in the example. Regardless of the specific imple-
mentation, we expect the recovery to typically be imperfect and
the data not perfectly fit primarily due to limitations in the model
discretization and array and source geometry, even when the data
1452 V.C. Tsai et al.

(a) Observed Travel Time Record Section is noiseless. Since the same physics is assumed that generates
the structure, in some sense the geological inversion performance
35 shown here is a best-case scenario; nonetheless, the idealized ex-
30 ample is useful to compare the strengths and weaknesses of the
Travel time (s) 25 proposed approach. If data uncertainties were too large, the geo-
logical inversion would not be guaranteed to produce reasonable
20
results, but with small enough data uncertainties, the results would
15
be similar. A full analysis of how the results depend on data uncer-
10 tainties would be appropriate for future work.
5 There are a few key differences between the 3 inversion results
0 that we would like to highlight. First and most importantly, by con-
10 20 30 40 50
Station # struction, the geological inversion (Fig. 2d) has exactly the same
parametrization as the geological events assumed to produce the
structure and hence captures exactly the elements of the geological
processes that were assumed. Furthermore, parameters of geological
(b) Stencil for Geologic Inversion
interest, such as fault slip and sediment depositional amount, have

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x1' x2' x3' x4'
h'3 v2 v0 or v2
been directly estimated. Notably, the geological inversion is able to
v0 or v2
h2' accurately determine all 10 geological parameters, up to a certain
v0 or v1 v0 or v1 error. In contrast, it is unclear where the geological unit bound-
h'1 v1
aries should be placed in the standard inversion result (Fig. 2b),
v0
and although the geometric inversion (Fig. 2c) captures the distinct
geological boundaries, the parametrization is not able to capture
the precise shapes or provide useful constraints on fault slip mag-
b1 binary variable: b2 binary variable:
nitudes. Secondly, the data misfits achieved are similar for the ge-
True if v1 and v2 fill left section True if v1 and v2 fill right section
ological inversion [root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.24 s] and
False if v0 fills left section False if v0 fills right section
the traditional gridded inversion (RMSE of 0.26 s), with the geo-
12 stencil variables: v0, v1, v2, x1' , x'2, x3' , x4' , h1' , h2' , h'3, b1, b2 metric inversion misfit being somewhat higher but still relatively
low (RMSE of 0.58 s). These misfit comparisons are not entirely
meaningful since all three inversions could achieve lower misfits
(c) Mapping from Stencil to Geologic Variables in a variety of ways. For example, lower misfit could be achieved
in the gridded inversion by reducing the strength of regularization,
v0, v1, v2 v0, v1, v2
in the geometric inversion by increasing the number of parameters,
h'
1
h1 and in the geological inversion by using a finer grid search on cer-
h1' +h3' s1 tain parameters. In all cases, there are significant trade-offs in both
computational time and robustness of the subsequent result, and
h2' s2
it is unclear that solutions with lower misfits would be preferable.
If b1=0, x2'
x1 Thirdly, although the parametrizations chosen are independent of
If b1=1, x1' the data type used, we observe that the three models obtained by
If b2=0, x3' fitting traveltime data as in this example will have varying successes
x2
If b2=1, x4' in predicting other data like full-waveform seismic data. Although
If b1=0, x1'
we do not perform full-waveform synthetics here, it is clear that the
x3 geologically inverted model would fit these alternative data better
If b1=1, x'2
since it is a better representation of the assumed reality. In contrast,
If b2=0, x4'
x4 the gridded model’s large-scale smoothness blurs certain sharp ar-
If b2=1, x3' rivals and the small-scale blockiness adds sharp arrivals where they
should not exist. The geometric model is similar to the geological
(d) Inversion Order model, but is not nearly as accurate since the allowed geometry
4
Left block: 6
was not flexible enough to capture the assumed reality. This may
1 2 3
h'2 or h1' , h3' , v1 v be the most important conclusion since it suggests that the more
⇒ 5 ⇒ 1
v0 ⇒ x1' , x4' , v2 ⇒ x2' , x3' ⇒⇒ b1, b2 ⇒ h2' , v1 physically realistic model parametrization is more robust to mak-
⇒ ⇒
Right block: h1' , h3' , v1 ing predictions of data types that were not observed. This trait is a
hallmark of successful scientific models and to some extent is the
h2' or h1' , h'3, v1
entire goal of the scientific method (Curd & Cover 1998).
Figure 3. Steps for geological inversion of sedimentary basin example.
We close this subsection by commenting on how the geological
(a) Traveltime record section. Each line represents one of the 39 sources, model could be made more complex. Since the example shown was
with the observed traveltimes at the 50 stations tabulated across the x-axis. an idealization from even a simple real sedimentary basin, one may
Synthetics are using a straight-ray assumption. (b) Stencil for the geological wonder whether this limits the geological tomography approach to
inversion with 12 variables. ‘Left’ section refers to the block between x1 ’ only the simplest of structures. Although adding model complex-
and x2 ’, and ‘right’ section refers to the block between x3 ’ and x4 ’. (c) ity creates certain challenges in how to perform the inversion (see
Mapping from stencil to geological variables. (d) Schematic of the order in Section 4.1), there is no inherent issue in adding justified model
which inversion occurs. Numbers are referred to in the text and details are complexity. For example, one could straightforwardly add vertical
provided in the Supporting Information. gradients in velocity to all of the layers so that there were three

additional parameters to the example of this section. If the assumed
gradients are sufficiently weak, these three additional parameters
can simply be included and determined at the end of the inversion
(solved for last), with no further changes to the geological inver-
sion routine. When gradients are allowed to be large and non-linear,
the inversion routine would need to be changed, but there is no
inherent problem in adding such gradients. On the other extreme
end of the complexity spectrum, where geological information is
abundant, one might be interested in allowing for other geolog-
ical processes including 3-D ductile deformation, listric faulting,
rollover anticlines, fault-bend folds, fault-propagation folds or half
grabens (e.g. Waldron & Snyder 2020). Again, there is no inherent
limitation in including such processes when warranted. In princi-
ple, all of the processes included in structural geology modelling
software such as GemPy (de la Varga et al. 2019) could be in-
corporated. However, only if the data is sufficiently good or the a
priori information sufficiently strong would including this range
of processes lead to a unique solution (see requirement 2 from
Section 3.1), so we would argue that such complex possibilities
should be limited only to those situations, and not used when the
information is more limited. For example, well studied sedimentary
basins like the Los Angeles Basin (Wright 1991) or Seattle Basin
(Troost & Booth 2008) may benefit from such detailed parametriza-
tion, whereas simpler geological parametrizations may be more ap-
propriate for other basins like the Jakarta Basin (Cipta et al. 2018)
that have less information available.
3.3. Example subduction zone inversion with geological
tomography
The use of geological parametrizations is not limited to sedimentary
basins or constant velocity regions, so here we also demonstrate an
application to subduction zone imaging in which part of the phys-
ical model is more complex. In this example (Fig. 4a), a simple
subduction zone geometry is assumed with trench location (x1 ), a
constant thickness oceanic lithosphere (h1 ) of velocity vL , a con-
stant thickness continental crust (h2 ) of velocity vC , and a constant
dip angle (θ ). For example, this could approximate an old and cold
oceanic plate (hence approximately constant thickness) subducting
at near constant rate under a uniform continental crust. The only
additional complexity we allow in this example is that the mantle
wedge is cooled by contact with the cold slab. We assume a diffu-
sive cooling model of the form T = TM + (T0 − TM ) · erfc( 2√yκt )
where TM is the mantle temperature (assumed 1300 ◦ C), T0 is the
surface temperature (assumed 0 ◦ C), y is the distance perpendicular
to the subducting plate surface, t is the time since it subducted, and κ
= 10−6 m2 s–1 is a known value for the thermal diffusivity. In order
to translate the model into a seismic velocity prediction, we assume
a simple linear scaling of −0.75 per cent per 100 ◦ C (Cammarano
et al. 2003) and that t = z/R, where z is the subducted distance
and R is the subduction rate. The 8 model parameters are therefore
h1 , h2 , x1 , θ , R, vL , vC and vM . A schematic is shown in Fig. 4(a), and
a specific realization is shown in Fig. 4(b). As with the sedimentary
basin example, this subduction zone example is very idealized from
the expected reality. For example, we assume that the plate velocity
remains constant over time, we ignore the effects of partial melting,
dehydration reactions, and other phase transitions on seismic veloc-
ity in the crust and mantle, and finally we do not consider the effect
of temperature on seismic velocity outside the thermal boundary
layer between the subducted plate and the mantle wedge. Includ-
ing these effects will make the true situation significantly more
Geological tomography 1453
complicated than the example shown. In principle, all of the
additional complexity could be incorporated into a geological
parametrization and we suggest that future work should focus on
how to best do this. The purpose of the present example is to
demonstrate proof of principle and highlight some of the key dif-
ferences in a scenario where a more complex physical model (i.e.
a scenario where smooth seismic velocity gradients arise from the
thermal boundary layer adjacent to the subducted plate) is used
within the geological parametrization (compared to the relatively
simple physical model assumed in the sedimentary basin example),
and for which mathematical approaches like sparsity regularization
(Candes et al. 2008) would not be effective. As with the previous
example, the physics assumed in the geological inversion is ex-
actly the physics used to create the example, making the results a
best-case scenario for the performance of the geological inversion.
Inversions of the traveltime data set from Fig. 4(b) using the
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traditional gridded inversion is shown in Fig. 4(c) and using the
geological parametrization is shown in Fig. 4(d). The geological
inversion is also performed stepwise, beginning with estimating
x1 (step 1), then solving for vL and vC (step 2), re-estimating x1
(step 3), solving for vM and h1 (step 4), solving for h2 (step 5),
estimating θ and iteratively solving for x1 and θ (step 6) and then
solving for R (step 7) (see Supporting Information for details). As
can be observed in Fig. 4, despite having an order of magnitude
more parameters (200 instead of 8), the traditional gridded inver-
sion approach cannot resolve the subtle velocity gradient caused
by the mantle wedge cooling whereas the geological parametriza-
tion can resolve it and use it to estimate the subduction rate R (see
Fig. 4d). In this example, there is a 26 per cent error on the estimate
of this rate, due to the subtlety of the velocity signal, but the physics
can be determined (one can infer the shape of the isotherms and
constrain the velocity of the downgoing plate) and the error can
be estimated. We reiterate that there are multiple ways to imple-
ment the geological type of inversion, and the method described
uses a practical compromise between computational cost and accu-
racy. We note that the error could be lessened if further iteration
on other parameters were performed and if the data quality were
high enough. On the other hand, if the data quality were worse or
if the parametrization were too crude a representation of the reality
of the subduction zone, then the estimated error would increase and
added iteration may not be warranted. Finally, we comment that
again the example provided is a simplistic one that could be made
more realistic in a number of ways. For example, one could add a
half-space cooling model for both the lithosphere and crustal parts
of the model (rather than being constant velocity), and one could
have ages of these blocks be the parameters of the model rather
than the constant thicknesses assumed here. One could also im-
prove the physical realism of the subduction model by allowing for
warming of the subducted plate and related velocity changes, or by
using a more accurate temperature-to-seismic velocity relationship
or accounting for expected phase changes. We do not implement
such added complexities partly because there would be additional
choices needed, but there are no fundamental limitations that would
prevent such modifications of the geological parametrization once
the physics to be considered is agreed upon.
3.4. Continental United States basin and crustal inversion
example with geological tomography
We conclude this section with one non-synthetic example of de-
termining basin and crustal structure across the continental United
1454 V.C. Tsai et al.

(a)

(b)

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(c)

(d)

Figure 4. Comparison of inversions for a subduction zone example. (a) Schematic of a subduction zone with the geological processes and their associated
parameters described. (b) Example of a specific realization of geological events to form a subduction zone to be imaged (input model). (c) Inversion with
traditional gridded parametrization. (d) Inversion with geological parametrization. Estimated parameters are listed to the right, with (a) listing the parameters
of the input model. Uncertainties are estimated as described in the Supporting Information.

vS(z) tary basins are known to have seismic shear velocities that increase
with depth approximately as a power-law function of depth, vs (z)
vb(z)=v0(z/z0)a = v0 (z/z0 )a (e.g. Boore & Joyner 1997; Boore et al. 2011; Tsai
hb & Atiganyanun 2014), with the reference velocity v0 (at depth z0 )
Depth (z)

and power-law exponent a being related to the geological history

vc
hc
vm
Figure 5. Schematic 1-D velocity structure for a simple geological model
describing a basin with a power-law velocity structure, a constant velocity
crust and a constant velocity mantle.
States that demonstrates the feasibility of applying geological to-
mography to real data. In this example, we utilize surface-wave
dispersion maps across the continental United States from Ekstrom
(2017) to invert for three sedimentary basin parameters including
basin depth and three crustal-scale parameters including crustal
thickness as shown schematically in Fig. 5. Specifically, sedimen-
of the basin including the deposition rate (e.g. Audet & Fowler
1992; Schneider et al. 1996). We therefore choose the three basin
parameters to be v0 , a and basin depth, hb . The crustal parameters
are average crustal shear-wave velocity, vc , crustal thickness, hc and
average upper mantle shear wave velocity, vm , for a total of 6 param-
eters at every location for which the 22 (11 periods for Love wave
and 11 periods for Rayleigh waves) phase velocity measurements
are available. Although the 6-parameter basin and crust package is
yet again a significant idealization of the real crust, we find we are
able to determine key geological information such as basin depth,
basin power-law exponent and crustal thickness that are useful phys-
ical constraints on the geological evolution of the North American
continent (see below). We note that surface-wave dispersion data are
rarely used alone to determine layer boundaries such as basin depth
and crustal thickness due to their known smearing of sensitivity at a
wide range of depths, but the geological parametrization allows for

these features to be successfully determined (see below). We also
note that our parametrization shares some similar features to previ-
ous basin studies like Magistrale et al. (2000) who define the basin
depth and velocity increase as parameters; these previous studies
do not perform a tomographic inversion as done here and instead
use tomographic results as inputs to their model construction.
Results from the inversion of the dispersion data are shown in
Fig. 6. This geological inversion was also performed stepwise, first
determining an average crustal model (vc , hc and vm ) using a linear
Dix inversion (Haney & Tsai 2015; Haney & Tsai 2017; Haney
et al. 2020) with the Rayleigh-wave data from 10 to 40 s period, and
separately estimating a by fitting the Love-wave data from 5 to 20 s
period to a power-law (Tsai & Atiganyanun 2014) and estimating
hb through inversion of the same Love-wave data with the linear
Dix inversion (Haney & Tsai 2020). The best-fitting v0 and updated
crustal velocity vc were then determined using all of the Rayleigh-
wave data. See Supporting Information for details.
We highlight a few interesting basin features of Figs 6(a)–(c).
First, the location and existence of all major, deep sedimentary
basins are accurately determined (Frezon et al. 1983; Mooney &
Kaban 2010), including the very thick Mississippi Embayment and
Gulf of Mexico sedimentary sequence (Stetson 1953; Davis 2017),
the Williston Basin (Carlson & Anderson 1965), the Denver Basin
(Nelson & Santus 2011), the Central Valley of California (Faunt
et al. 2010) and even the relatively shallow Chesapeake Bay sedi-
ments (Newell et al. 2004). Shallower basins are not well imaged
due to limitations of the data (with 5 s being the shortest periods
available, and thus being insensitive to the shallowest ∼1–2 km),
though some of these like the Michigan Basin and the Rome Trough
(West Virginia to Pennsylvania) are mapped into the average crustal
velocity and are clearly observed in Fig. 6(d). (Higher frequency
data would be required to properly invert for these basins.) The
Williston Basin further stands out as a relatively shallow (2–4 km)
basin with the strongest velocity gradient (a = 0.4–0.6) (Fig. 6b).
Although the Mississippi Embayment and Gulf of Mexico has likely
unrealistically higher average basin velocity than most other basins
in our results, the staggeringly large depth extent (>10 km) in the
deepest part of the on-land portion is dramatically highlighted; the
shallow-most low velocity Gulf sediments are not well represented
in this basin average and would require assuming a multi-part basin
(e.g. as in Section 3.2) to resolve (which is not done here). In some
cases, there are trade-offs between the apparent depth and veloc-
ity contrast within the basin, with surface waves best constraining
only the product for shallow basins. One potentially new finding
which has not been commented on previously is the relatively deep
(>4 km) basin in Central Oregon and part of Northern California
that trends north–south directly to the east of the Cascades Range.
A similar feature was observed in the somewhat shallow (1–3 km)
density maps of Lin et al. (2014) and we suggest this robustly im-
aged joint basin feature to be due to low density, low velocity ash
deposits from prior Cascades eruptions, potentially mixed with sed-
imentary deposits. These basin deposits are not observed in surface
geology maps (e.g. Frezon et al. 1983; Mooney & Kaban 2010)
due to more recent volcanic flow deposits completely covering and
burying them. Most boreholes in this region have focused on the
more economically relevant near-shore basins west of the Cascade
Range (Wermiel 1987) and have not previously discussed the find-
ings described here as a major tectonic feature.
We next describe a few interesting features of the crustal-scale
features in Figs 6(d)–(f). Generally, our maps are consistent with
previous studies of the continental United States with slower aver-
age crustal velocities (Fig. 6d), thinner crust (Fig. 6f) and slower
Geological tomography 1455
upper mantle velocities (Fig. 6e) in the tectonically active and highly
deformed western United States and faster average crustal veloci-
ties, thicker crust and slower upper mantle velocities in the stable
eastern United States (e.g. Shen & Ritzwoller 2016). The Yellow-
stone hotspot track is clearly identified as the slowest upper mantle
velocities in Fig. 6(e), consistent with other studies (e.g. Schmandt
et al. 2012). The Rio Grande Rift is also evident in the slow upper
mantle velocities (e.g. Lin et al. 2014). Our crustal thickness results
depart from those of other studies in a few interesting ways. We
observe thickened crust underlying the Cascades Range, unlike in
most studies (e.g. Shen & Ritzwoller 2016), but consistent with the
results of Haney et al. (2020), likely because our method images the
slab interface as the crust–mantle boundary and treats the subducted
Juan de Fuca plate and weak continental Moho as part of the crust
(Haney et al. 2020). We also image a thickened Sierra Nevada that
is not apparent in Shen & Ritzwoller (2016) but which would be
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consistent with Airy isostasy. Perhaps most interestingly, we image
a shallower crustal thickness across eastern Montana and western
North Dakota (∼40 km compared with ∼50 km from Shen & Ritz-
woller (2016)) which we suggest may be due to the fact that receiver
functions from this region observe two strong discontinuities (e.g.
Song et al. 2022) and may be caused by a thick package of rocks
that have properties intermediate to purely crustal or purely mantle
rock types.
The features imaged here should be treated as preliminary find-
ings to be verified with other data sets with better sensitivities to the
various features described. However, we believe this preliminary ap-
plication of geological tomography to the continental United States
helps demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of the framework,
despite the numerous simplifications of reality that must be assumed
to apply the framework. Unlike in the previous 2 synthetic exam-
ples, we reiterate that this example was not based on synthetic data
produced with the same parametrization used for the inversion so
that the data is not perfectly compatible with the assumed model;
nonetheless, the geological inversion provides a sensible and useful
result. The geological model assumed was also very simplified, but
future work could attempt a similar but more realistic and complex
geological parametrization.
4 CHALLENGES TO ADDRESS IN
GEOLOGICAL TOMOGRAPHY
FRAMEWORK
From the three examples (Section 3.2–3.4), many of the differ-
ences in the design and performance of the inversions have been
demonstrated. Notably, geological tomography allows parameters
of geological or geodynamic interest to be directly estimated from
the inversion, such as fault slip in the sedimentary basin example,
subduction rate the subduction zone example, and basin depth in the
continental United States example. However, if geological tomog-
raphy is to become commonly used, it is important to also consider
some of the main challenges with this new approach, focusing on
ones that differ from those of traditional tomography. We summarize
the main benefits and challenges of the three different approaches
to parametrizing tomography in Table 1.
4.1. Every problem is different
One of the benefits of standard gridded tomography is that it can
be applied easily to new data sets and new regions. In contrast, in
the geological tomography approach, every problem may need to
1456 V.C. Tsai et al.
Figure 6. Continental United States inversion results for basin and crustal-scale properties from surface-wave dispersion measurements. (a) Basin Vs at z0 =
1 km depth, v0 (see Fig. 5). (b) Basin power-law exponent, a (see Fig. 5). (c) Basin depth. (d) Crustal Vs , vc . (e) Mantle Vs , vm . (f) Crustal thickness.
be evaluated independently, with a particular eye to the physics,
the data, the a priori information and the degree to which various
potential geological parametrizations are commensurate with the
data and a priori information. Different physics may be more im-
portant in different situations, for example, with the sedimentary
basin processes (e.g. graben faulting and deposition) and subduc-
tion zone processes (e.g. subduction and mantle wedge cooling)
being quite different. More subtly, every application has different
a priori information available and different data quality and array
geometry. Due to our criterion that the parameters of the geolog-
ical model be uniquely determinable with the data (and a priori
information) available, this implies that new synthetic tests must
be performed for every new data set to determine which geological
parametrization is appropriate. The parametrization should ideally
be only as complex as warranted, no more and no less. In cases
where data noise is significant, the synthetic tests must account for
this or else there is a danger that the geological inversion will yield
useless or misleading results.
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When a priori information is abundant, there is a question of
how to best incorporate this a priori information. For example, in
a sedimentary basin setting, what are the 5 most important pro-
cesses to include in a parametrization or, if the data warrants it,
what are the 10 most important processes to include? Answering
such questions takes significant expert knowledge of both the geo-
logical processes as well as the imaging technique (e.g. seismic ray
theory, full-waveform inversion, microtremor methods, etc.) and is
perhaps the most difficult challenge for implementing geological
tomography. Different choices can be tested with synthetic exam-
ples, but the difficulty of including all aspects of reality in such
examples precludes this being a perfect solution. Thus, geological
tomography may require significantly better education and deeper
geological insight on the part of the user than has traditionally been
needed for tomographers. Although it is difficult to generalize, one
possibility for approaching complex problems (e.g. where many of
the geological processes are known and should be included) is to
perform the inversion in steps that go from simpler to more complex.

Table 1. Comparison of the three different tomographic parametrizations.
Tomographic
parametrization Standard gridded
Description • Pixel, voxel, spline, spherical
harmonic or cell based
Benefits • Flexible and general
• Maximizes discovery opportunities
• Unbiased
• Linear or weakly non-linear
inversion
• Straightforward implementation
Challenges • Does not respect geology/physics
• Physical parameters difficult to
estimate
• Many parameters
• Underdetermined
• No physical priors
• Needs regularization
For example, one might always want to begin the imaging process
with standard gridded tomography to get a better sense for the limi-
tations of the data set, and then proceed next to the simplest geolog-
ical parametrization that is consistent with what one expects based
on the gridded approach. Not only would this simplest geological
parametrization utilize as few parameters as possible, but it should
also utilize the ones that likely have the most explanatory power and
least trade-off, similar to in the examples shown in Figs 3, 4 and 6.
Once these parameters are estimated, additional complexity can be
added. This approach can also help reduce the computational needs
since it uses fewer resources to proceed stepwise than as a joint
inversion. Nonetheless, one may continue to refine estimates of the
first parameters as warranted. In most cases, a priori information
can also be used to provide initial priors on the likely possible range
for the various parameters (e.g. Jackson 1972). In some cases, the
a priori information is strong and can help make binary decisions
about whether certain processes or parameters should be included
in the inversion whereas in other cases weaker a priori information
should only loosely guide choices, leaving the decision to the inver-
sion based on how well the data are fit. Although there are Bayesian
frameworks that could help weigh the data versus a priori informa-
tion (e.g. Tarantola 2005) and incorporate conditional priors (e.g.
Denison et al. 2002), these frameworks may be difficult to evalu-
ate and it may be appropriate to use the more intuitive approach
described above. We also emphasize that, however detailed, the ge-
ological parametrization chosen will inevitably be a simplification
of reality and therefore will always be imperfect in ways that the
synthetic examples shown in Section 3 are not. Again, the degree
to which the parametrizations are successful can lead to criteria for
whether they should be preferred or not (see Section 4.4).
4.2. Non-linear instead of linear inversion
Another benefit of standard gridded inversion is that the straight-
ray inversion is strictly linear in the gridded (velocity) parameters,
and can be solved straightforwardly with linear matrix algorithms
(e.g. Aster et al. 2013); furthermore, gridded inversion remains only
weakly non-linear with added complexity such as non-straight rays
Geological tomography 1457
Geometric
(e.g. Muir & Tsai 2020a) Geological (this work)
• Geometric boundaries explicitly • Geologic/physical parameters
estimated estimated
• Model geometries estimated • Physical parameters of interest
directly estimated directly, including errors
• Includes appropriate a priori
information
• Fewer parameters
• Overdetermined
• Model selection is straightforward
• Computationally inefficient, • Physics must be understood or
requires care in numerical tested
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implementation
• Highly non-linear • Non-linear
• Local minima common • Every problem is different
• Expert knowledge required
(e.g. Rawlinson & Sambridge 2004) or finite-frequency effects (e.g.
Zhou et al. 2004). In contrast, one of the challenges with geological
inversion is that it is generally more strongly non-linear and there-
fore must rely on a range of different types of algorithms. As an
example, in the sedimentary basin example shown in Section 3.2
(see Fig. 3d), step 1 was linear (with a subset of the data), step 2
used a (non-linear) Newton method, step 3 used a data visualization
technique to infer parameters, step 4 used a linear inversion within
a (non-linear) grid search, step 5 used a decision tree and step 6
had three different cases, each with a linear inversion within a grid
search. There are many other possible approaches to performing the
same inversion. For example, steps 4, 5 and 6 could have been com-
bined into a 4-parameter grid search, and a Newton method could
have been used in step 6. In one extreme, one could have performed
a full grid search for all 10 geological parameters or for the 12 sten-
cil parameters we initially inverted for. All of these choices have
implications for computational time, and this last approach would
not have been computationally feasible on the computer architecture
used, although it may have been feasible if codes were parallelized
and high-performance computing resources were utilized (e.g. Leng
et al. 2016). As is the norm for non-linear problems, it is difficult
to generalize to assess whether certain inversion techniques will
be accurate and robust in all scenarios, and such choices are best
decided by an expert with the data at hand (e.g. Zelt 1999).
Although the specific steps of the stepwise inversions shown in
Fig. 7 again depend on the specific problem, it is a general feature
that the parameters are not equivalent (unlike in gridded inversion
where every parameter is a gridded velocity), and some parame-
ters should be more readily and robustly determined with less trade
off with other parameters. In the proposed approach, one should
solve for these parameters first, similar to the discussion in Sec-
tion 4.1 except within the inversion step itself. Information about
the geological structure thus builds up step by step throughout the
inversion as shown in Fig. 7(a) for the sedimentary basin exam-
ple and in Fig. 7(b) for the subduction zone example. Within a
Bayesian framework, one can think of the results of the previous
step (posterior) to act as a prior for the next step of the inversion
(e.g. Denison et al. 2002; Tarantola 2005). Unfortunately, the most
1458 V.C. Tsai et al.
(a) (b)
1 vastly different. A natural outcome of the geological inversion is that
1 2
2 3 & 4
3 5
4 & 5
6
6 7
Figure 7. Schematic showing how information is obtained step by step
throughout the geological inversion. (a) Sedimentary basin example. (b)
Subduction zone example. Numbers correspond to numbers described in
the text (Sections 3.2 and 3.3, respectively).
straightforward way to know which parameters are better deter-
mined is to make use of uncertainty quantification from a full grid
search (e.g. Tarantola 2005; Sullivan 2015). Since such a full grid
search is computationally inefficient and often practically impos-
sible, one must inevitably use less direct expert knowledge of the
situation to make educated guesses as to what some likely possi-
bilities might be, and that smaller set of design possibilities may
each be tested to determine which is better. Even this smaller set of
architectures may be challenging to test since the implementation
of each one can take significant effort on the part of the researcher.
Finally, we note that since inversion is non-linear, a Markov-
Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach may be particularly effective
(e.g. Bodin & Sambridge 2009). Since MCMC inversion approaches
rely only on many forward solves, without requiring inverses to be
taken, and is more efficient than a full grid search, the computational
time required is similar to that needed when applying MCMC to
linear inverse problems while simultaneously potentially being more
robust than determining a single best-fitting model. Since generic
MCMC or even sophisticated samplers like Hamiltonian Monte
Carlo (Betancourt 2018) or affine invariant samplers (Goodman &
Weare 2010) may still be prohibitively expensive, when applied to
geological inversion, we would still advocate that the sampling be
done stepwise, in the same manner as described above, to reduce
the computational burden of exploring the entire parameter space.
For example, for the sedimentary basin example, this would imply
sampling and performing MCMC on the background velocity first
with a subset of the data, after which the distribution on this first
parameter can be fixed for sampling of the other parameters.
4.3. Error analysis
The examples show that the errors on the different parameters can be
different parameters have different uncertainties. If the inversion is
performed stepwise, as done in the examples, these uncertainties
can be straightforwardly estimated since there are clear relation-
ships between the parameters estimated and the steps themselves.
For example, on each Newton step, an uncertainty on the specific
parameter being solved for can be estimated with the inverse Hes-
sian on that variable (e.g. Aster et al. 2013); on a grid search step,
uncertainties are again easily associated with the numerically ap-
proximated Hessian; in other steps, the grid spacing or step size can
be associated with the uncertainty in a parameter (e.g. in step 3 of
the sedimentary basin inversion). Although these stepwise uncer-
tainties are conditional uncertainties rather than full uncertainties
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(e.g. Aster et al. 2013), the full uncertainties are dominated by the
conditional uncertainties due to the order of inversion; moreover,
the full uncertainties could be calculated at the end of the inversion
by rerunning the specific inversion step for a range of values for
other parameters. In some cases, the ‘true’ parameter uncertainty
is smaller than the step size used in the inversion, in which case
an upper bound on the uncertainty of that parameter is determined.
Generally, this ability of geological inversion to directly estimate
the uncertainties on geological parameters of interest is one of the
main expected benefits of the approach. As mentioned in Section
2, standard gridded tomography will always be useful for cases
where the geological processes are unknown (for example, when
one encounters a new region without any geological or other imag-
ing data). However, quantitative inferences about the geological
processes involved are best estimated with the geological inversion
approach.
4.4. Model selection for different models
One of the key ways in which the geological inversion described here
can be useful is in determining which model framework amongst
two or more frameworks is better or more parsimoniously fits
the data. To accomplish this comparison between different model
frameworks, including those with potentially quite different num-
bers of parameters, a model selection framework is useful and can
be applied. Model selection has been used in many other con-
texts, including to choose between different seismic hazards models
(Scherbaum et al. 2009), to decide whether data is sufficient to con-
clude that the Earth has a core (Muir & Tsai 2020b), to determine
the best structural model in engineering (Beck & Yuen 2004) and
to decide the appropriate basis for fluid imaging (Grauer et al.
2017). Similar to how model selection is argued to help in the ge-
ometric parametrization framework (Muir & Tsai 2020a), model
selection using various information criterion (e.g. Claeskens 2016),
using posterior predictive performance checks like leave-one-out
cross validation (LOO-CV; Vehtari et al. 2017), using Bayes fac-
tors (Weinberg 2012) or using Bayesian evidence (Sambridge et al.
2006) can determine which geological model framework is prefer-
able.
Using a model selection framework is especially important for
geological tomography when it is unclear which of a variety of dif-
ferent simplifications of the complex reality is most parsimonious
in terms of explaining the data. Unlike in traditional tomography,
where one can choose to ignore the physics in favour of having
a maximally generic and flexible set of basis functions, in using
a geological parametrization, the user must grapple with the fact

that likely no reasonable geological parametrization can express all
possible images of the Earth. Although some may see this as a draw-
back of the approach, this has advantages from an epistemological
standpoint, since a large subset of possibilities can be ruled out
by the nature of the inversion, and the inversion and user can thus
focus only on the smaller subset of physically plausible structures
to distinguish between (e.g. Curd & Cover 1998). Moreover, having
to choose simplifications that do not capture all of reality force the
user to focus their attention to those parameters and processes which
are possible to distinguish from each other and away from those for
which the data have less explanatory power over (and for which the
null space is large).
4.5. Extension to other data types
Although the examples shown are only for transmission straight-ray
traveltime tomography and for one surface-wave dispersion data
set, the geological parametrization framework is one that applies to
arbitrary data types and arbitrarily complex forward solvers. Com-
putational issues aside, it would be straightforward to include other
seismic phases including both P and S reflected, refracted or scat-
tered arrivals using the geological parametrizations discussed here,
and one can also straightforwardly perform full-waveform anelas-
tic inversion within the same framework. One can also apply the
framework to non-seismic data, including gravity data, electromag-
netic data and neutrino data. However, due to the vastly different
sensitivities of those data types to the structures of interest, the spe-
cific implementation of an inversion routine would likely change
and even the sets of geological parameters that are best to solve for
may be different. As an example, while traveltime data alone cannot
distinguish between density anomalies independently from elastic
moduli, if gravity data were included jointly in an inversion then it
is likely that density should be added as another parameter (or as
multiple parameters) to express the fact that the data are robustly
sensitive to it.
4.6. Relationship with other alternative approaches
Given some of the similarities between geological tomography and
alternative approaches like Bayesian tomography (Khan et al. 2008;
Koelmeijer et al. 2018) and tomography with interrogation theory
(Arnold & Curtis 2018), we provide some further explanation about
how those different approaches may relate to geological tomogra-
phy.
The philosophical approach taken in Bayesian tomography is to
perform full geodynamic simulations to the best accuracy possible
and to compare predictions of seismic observables for an ensem-
ble of geodynamic simulations with the observed seismic data sets.
Through a Bayesian (sometimes MCMC) approach, one can then
make inferences about the likelihood of whether geodynamic pa-
rameters take on certain values or not. At face value, then, the
geological tomography approach shares some of the philosophy
of the Bayesian approach. The key difference is that there are of-
ten significant trade-offs between geodynamic parameters that are
not allowed within the stricter requirements of geological inversion,
and moreover exploring the full range of geodynamic possibilities is
typically not computationally feasible. In contrast, in the geological
tomography approach, one must make difficult choices in order to
prevent the underdetermined and trade-off problems and expresses
a less ambitious philosophy than that of Bayesian tomography. As
Geological tomography 1459
discussed in Section 4.2, one can certainly use a Bayesian frame-
work to implement a geological inversion, and the two approaches
may converge in the distant future, when significantly more infor-
mation is known about the Earth’s interior. However, until that time,
the approaches should be thought of as being distinctly different.
On the other hand, the philosophical approach taken in inter-
rogation theory is to pose a specific question that one is inter-
ested in having answered by an imaging data set. Again, there is
some similarity to the geological tomography approach where the
value of each of the geological parameters of interest is estimated.
The main difference is that geological tomography estimates all
of the geological parameters of interest simultaneously by forcing
the parametrization to be geological; in contrast, within the inter-
rogation framework, one would need to ask separate questions for
each parameter and the tomography itself still relies on traditional
parametrizations. Within interrogation theory, the estimates of cer-
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tain parameters are not used in the estimates of the other parameters,
whereas it is an integral part of geological tomography for estimates
of certain parameters (with more trade-off) to depend on other pa-
rameters (that have less trade-off), with the order of determination
being important.
In some sense, geological tomography can be thought of as a
middle ground between a fully Bayesian approach and the interro-
gation approach. In geological tomography, an intermediate num-
ber of geological parameters to estimate is chosen that carefully
weighs a trade-off between complexity and simplicity. Furthermore,
it achieves an intermediate result of quantitatively and jointly esti-
mating as many parameters as are well determined.
5 C O N C LU S I O N S
In this contribution, we have introduced the concept of the geo-
logical parametrization of tomography, a natural extension of the
geometric parametrization approach of Muir & Tsai (2020a). The
key requirement is for the parameters of the inversion to be directly
related to the geological processes being imaged while still being
uniquely determinable within the context of the available data and a
priori information. We found that performing inversions for geolog-
ical parameters is feasible in synthetic tests for both a sedimentary
basin example and a subduction zone example and the geologi-
cal inversion addresses some of the main limitations of standard
gridded tomography. Preliminary application to a real dispersion
data set at the continental United States scale demonstrates the
usefulness of the approach for making inferences about geological
features including basin history and crustal thickness. Although we
believe there to be great promise in geological tomography allow-
ing for more useful scientific inferences regarding the geological
processes involved, there are numerous challenges that also must
be addressed for geological tomography to become widespread.
Amongst the most important challenges are (1) the need for expert
knowledge of both the geology and (seismic) data set to pose a
parsimonious geological inversion, (2) the move from a linear or
weakly non-linear inverse problem to a strongly non-linear one and
(3) the setup of an inversion to uniquely solve for complex sets of
geological parameters, particularly when abundant information is
available. We have provided guidance on each of these challenges
but fully expect there to be an extensive development time period
over which more detailed answers to these challenges are elaborated
upon and specialized for different geological contexts. Once geo-
logical tomography is mature, tomography and Earth imaging will
finally be able to move beyond presenting qualitatively plausible
1460 V.C. Tsai et al.
structures to presenting quantitative constraints on the underlying
geological processes.
AC K N OW L E D G M E N T S
This study was supported by National Science Foundation grant
EAR-2011079. We thank Malcolm Sambridge, editor Andrea
Morelli and two anonymous reviewers for constructive criticism.
VCT designed the study, developed the codes, drafted the figures
and led the writing. VCT and CH designed the subduction zone
test. VCT and CAD designed the continental United States inver-
sion methodology. All authors contributed to the analysis and to
editing of the paper.
D ATA AVA I L A B I L I T Y
No new data were generated or analysed in support of this research.
Dispersion data are available from Ekstrom (2017). Code to imple-
ment the various inversions are available at https://doi.org/10.5281/
zenodo.7730731.
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S U P P O RT I N G I N F O R M AT I O N
Supplementary data are available at GJ I online.
Text S1. Text describing implementation of standard gridded
parametrization of tomography.
Text S2. Text describing implementation of geometric parametriza-
tion of tomography.
Text S3. Text describing implementation of geological parametriza-
tion of tomography.
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rected to the corresponding author for the paper.
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