A tomographic study of the Vp and Vp/Vs structures in the crust and upper mantle beneath the Taiwan region of China is conducted by simultaneous inversion of P and S arrival times. Compared with the previous tomographic results, the spherical finite difference technique is suitable for the strong heterogeneous velocity structure, and may improve the accuracy in the travel time and three-dimensional ray tracing calculations. The Vp and Vp/Vs structures derived from joint inversion and the relocated earthquakes can provide better constraints for analyzing the lateral heterogeneity and deep tectonic characters in the crust and upper mantle. Our tomographic results reveal significant relations between the seismic wavespeed structure and the tectonic characters. In the shallow depth, sedimentary basins and orogen show distinct wavespeed anomalies, with low Vp, high Vp/Vs in basins and high Vp, low Vp/Vs in orogen. As the suture zone of Eurasian Plate and Philippine Sea Plate, Longitudinal Valley is characterized by a significant high Vp/Vs anomaly extending to the middle-lower crust and upper mantle, which reflects the impact of rock cracking, partial melting, and the presence of fluids. In the northeast Taiwan, the Vp, Vp/Vs anomalies and relocated earthquakes depict the subducting Philippine Sea Plate under the Eurasian Plate. The high Vp of oceanic plate and the low Vp, high Vp/Vs atop the subducted oceanic plate extend to 80 km depth. Along the east-west profiles, the thickness of crust reaches 60 km at the east of Central Range with eastward dipping trend, which reveals the eastward subduction of the thickened and deformed crust of the Eurasian continental plate.
