Passive Geophysical Imaging and its Role in Seismic Hazard

The Earth’s interior holds the key to understanding how its heterogeneous lithosphere deforms, where stress concentrates, and why destructive earthquakes nucleate in some regions and not others. Resolving the structure of the crust and upper mantle, and connecting that structure to active tectonic processes, remains one of the central challenges in solid earth geophysics. This is especially true in collisional belts, subduction margins, rift systems, and intraplate regions, where seismic risk is high and observational coverage is often sparse.

Passive geophysical methods are well suited to this challenge because they use naturally occurring signals to probe depths far beyond the reach of active surveys. Passive seismology, including receiver-function analysis, ambient-noise and surface-wave tomography, body- and surface-wave imaging, seismic anisotropy, and earthquake relocation, reveals velocity structure, discontinuities, and deformation fabrics throughout the lithosphere. Complementary techniques such as magnetotellurics, gravity and gradiometry, geomagnetic studies, and deep seismic sounding constrain electrical conductivity, density, and bulk architecture. When these methods are integrated through joint or sequential inversion, they yield a more complete and less ambiguous picture of lithospheric composition, rheology, and weakness zones than any single dataset allows. These images can then be translated into quantified inputs for seismic hazard and microzonation studies, informing mitigation in vulnerable regions.

This Research Topic aims to bring together advances in passive geophysical imaging of the crust and lithosphere, with particular attention to the link between imaged deep structure and the processes that govern seismogenesis and seismic hazard. We welcome contributions that integrate multiple geophysical observables, that target tectonically active or data-poor regions, and that move from structural characterization toward hazard-relevant interpretation.

We invite Original Research, Reviews, Mini-Reviews, Methods, and Data Report articles addressing themes including, but not limited to:

• Crustal and lithospheric imaging from receiver functions, surface-wave and ambient-noise tomography, and body-wave studies;

• Seismic anisotropy and lithospheric deformation in collisional, subduction, rift, and intraplate settings;

• Magnetotelluric, gravity, geomagnetic, and deep seismic sounding constraints on lithospheric structure;

• Joint and integrated inversion of seismic, electromagnetic, and potential-field data;

• Imaging of fault zones, weak zones, and structural controls on earthquake nucleation;

• Seismic hazard assessment, source characterization, and microzonation informed by deep imaging;

• Methodological and instrumentation advances that improve resolution of the deep crust and upper mantle.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: passive seismology, lithospheric structure, receiver functions, seismic tomography, magnetotellurics, seismic anisotropy, seismic hazard, crustal imaging, joint inversion, earthquake seismogenesis

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.