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Fault imaging in sparsely sampled 3D seismic data using common‐reflection‐surface processing and attribute analysis – a study in the Upper Rhine Graben
Author(s) -
Buness Hermann A.,
Hartmann Hartwig,
Rumpel HannaMaria,
Krawczyk Charlotte M.,
Schulz Rüdiger
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
geophysical prospecting
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.735
H-Index - 79
eISSN - 1365-2478
pISSN - 0016-8025
DOI - 10.1111/1365-2478.12099
Subject(s) - geology , reflection (computer programming) , reflector (photography) , seismology , midpoint , signal to noise ratio (imaging) , graben , environmental geology , data processing , reduction (mathematics) , fault (geology) , aperture (computer memory) , economic geology , regional geology , gemology , geothermal gradient , noise reduction , optics , engineering geology , computer science , acoustics , geophysics , telmatology , geometry , tectonics , artificial intelligence , physics , light source , volcanism , mathematics , programming language , operating system
Cost reduction in seismic reconnaissance is an issue in geothermal exploration and can principally be achieved by sparse acquisition. To address the adherent decrease in signal/noise ratio, the common‐reflection‐surface method has been proposed. We reduced the data density of an existing 3D dataset and evaluated the results of common‐reflection‐surface processing using seismic attributes. The application of the common‐reflection‐surface method leads in all cases to an improvement of the signal/noise ratio. The most distinct improvement can be seen in the low fold regions. The improvement depends strongly on the midpoint aperture, and there is a tradeoff between reflector continuity and horizontal resolution. If small scale targets are to be imaged, a small aperture size is necessary, which may be far below the Fresnel zone for a specific reflector. The substantial reduction of the data density leads in our case to an irrecoverable information loss.