User talk:Jreinstr/sandbox

Alex's Peer Review

Organization

• The sections are good, the organization is decent.
• I think splitting it into method and applications is a good idea.
• The method section is a little bit disorganized. I think the second paragraph should come before the first.

Content

• A better introductory sentence would be helpful [e.g. "The receiver function methodology is a relatively simple method in seismology to estimate receiver-side structure of the Earth's subsurface" or something along those lines].
• I think the method section could be a little bit longer (P-S and S-P are discussed, but H-k stacking and common conversion point stacking are missing, no need to be too detailed about them, just qualitatively what they are).
• References to P and S-waves ought to be linked to the different sections of the seismic wave page.
• I think that the discussion of reflection and refraction of seismic waves would benefit from a link to the Snell's law page.

Citations

• The citations are generally correct, but some statements do not include a reference:

Since receiver functions depend on wave refraction and reflection from P waves in the mantle, they can only be generated properly if the seismic event occurs between 30 and 80 degrees below the horizon of the seismograph station.

• The discussion of named phases (such as PpPmp, Ps, etc.) would benefit from a link to the seismic wave notation page (and would point out that the notation section is incomplete due to its focus on global phases).

Grammar and Style

• There were no major grammatical issues.
• Stylistically, I feel like there are cases where multiple short sentences could be merged into a longer, more cohesive sentence. For example, the first two sentences of the second paragraph of the Method should be a single sentence. This is not particularly important at this stage though.

Optional

• A reference that I think would be useful is: "Upper Mantle Imaging with Array Recordings of Converted and Scattered Teleseismic Waves" by Stéphane Rondenay, published in Surveys in Geohpysics in 2009 (link https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10712-009-9071-5).
• I'm not sure if it is a typo or a misunderstanding. Just to be clear:

Since receiver functions depend on wave refraction and reflection from P waves in the mantle, they can only be generated properly if the seismic event occurs between 30 and 80 degrees below the horizon of the seismograph station.

is incorrect. The degrees in the reference are not with respect to the horizontal at the station, but are a reference to the central angle between two locations of the surface of the Earth.

• I think the article would benefit greatly from a standard diagram of an incident wave that is then converted at the moho. This figure shows up all the time in presentations and introductory papers on receiver functions and looks a lot like the second figure on Ammon's page (link http://eqseis.geosc.psu.edu/~cammon/HTML/RftnDocs/rftn01.html).

Arblanchette (talk) 17:52, 18 February 2019 (UTC)

Feedback Response

Thanks for the feedback! It was really cool being able to have someone so intimately familiar with receiver functions review this article. I appreciated your lower level suggestions about citations, linking, and organization, and have made most of those changes. I also appreciated your higher level suggestion around adding an incident wave diagram and will work on finding one that I can use without any copyright issues. It does seem simple enough that I can draw myself, which I may attempt as well. Also, thanks for the tip on what I was missing in my method section - that was something I certainly could not have figured out myself, given my lack of familiarity with receiver functions. Jreinstr (talk) 07:17, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

In terms of what I have edited, I believe I addressed every smaller scope change you brought up. What I still need to do I have marked via TODOs: adding a diagram, expanding my discussion of H-k stacking, and cleaning up the references that do not have footnotes. For this next cycle, I would love for feedback on the paragraph I added on stacking and in general more micro-level feedback across other parts of the page. Thanks! Jreinstr (talk) 10:57, 1 March 2019 (UTC)

2nd Peer Review

It is looking much better/more complete than before.

Notes: First sentence should be "The receiver function method" instead of "A receiver function method".

"This is done done by deconvolution" should be "A receiver function is calculated by deconvolving the".

Method section:

"...it is largely converted into an S wave." This needs a reference. I'm not sure what you mean by largely converted into an S wave, on Chuck Ammon's website you can see on the first figure that the largest peak is the direct P-wave, with the Ps arrival being a smaller amplitude [the method assumes that the path in the crust of the direct P is close enough to the Ps path that they are effectively the same].

"Receiver functions use Snell's Law..." is incorrect. The waves follow Snell's Law (describing the angles of reflection and transmission with respect to the angle incidence and the velocities in each medium).

"Because of this they can only be generated properly if the central angle..." isn't quite right. See the following figure from the IRIS website showing global stacks of seismic waves | Global Vertical Stacks

Reasoning for the distance range (central angle measure) is to avoid "core phases" such as PcP and Pdiff (P diffracted) that at certain distances can arrive at the same time as the direct P wave, making interpretation complicated.

"Other time,..." should be "Over time,..."

"...the waveforms can be aggregated into two synthetic seismograms..." doesn't make sense. The authors of the paper created synthetic seismograms in an attempt to match the observations, not from the observations.

"By visually inspecting the data, it is possible to deconvolute the data..." should be deconvolve, not deconvolute. Also, deconvolution is not performed visually. I'm not sure where this came from as there is no reference.

Note that in the Rondenay reference they point out that the method is sensitive to discontinuities (it isn't sensitive to absolute velocities, but to changes in velocity. To get absolute velocities people usually perform a joint inversion using receiver functions and surface wave dispersion measurements).

Stacking section: You should point out that it is possible to stack along the ray-path to produce 2D and 3D images (this occurs in CCP stacking, but not H-k stacking).

Applications: Receiver functions provide information about velocity discontinuities.

Figure: The figure looks great Arblanchette (talk) 16:11, 11 March 2019 (UTC)