Shear-wave splitting:  
For the 11/18/03 earthquake in Samar, Phillipines (M=6.5), here is a plot of SKS particle motion.  

The back azimuth of the event is shown by the big red arrow. 

Note the elliptical motion in the mountains, contrasted with rectilinear motion for stations in the Tuscan "back-arc" region, as well as the westernmost stations.

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Inferred fast polarization axes for data for the 11/18/03 Samar event.  

The back azimuth of this arrival is indicated by the large arrow in the upper right corner.

No splitting was detected at four stations in the fore-arc basin, as well as at stations SCUR and BOB, which are situated in the mountain chain, but close to the boundary with the Alps.

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Receiver Function Estimates:
Receiver functions (RFs) will help us determine the crustal thicknesses in our field area, as well as the top of the subducting lithosphere. Crustal thickness appears to correlate with extensional tectonics in central Italy, with thinner crust (~20km) reported in the Tuscan extensional zone, compared with  30--40 km Moho depth in the Apennines compression zone. We estimated receiver functions for GAIA station SCUR from six large events in 2003, using the multiple-taper correlation RF-estimator.  SCUR is a noisy station, but we retrieved a plausible preliminary estimate of the radial RF for several bandpasses.  If the Moho-converted Ps phase is taken to be the RF-pulse at 5-s delay relative to initial P, thick crust lies under the Apennines near the Tuscany-Liguria border.  The strong Ps converted waves at delays less than 5s argue for complex crustal layering, consistent with the interpretion of the Apennines largely as a strongly deformed subduction-accretion complex.

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