scholarly journals Time–frequency windowing in multiparameter elastic FWI of shallow seismic wavefield

2020 ◽  
Vol 222 (2) ◽  
pp. 1164-1177
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Athanasopoulos ◽  
Edgar Manukyan ◽  
Thomas Bohlen ◽  
Hansruedi Maurer

SUMMARY Full-waveform inversion of shallow seismic wavefields is a promising method to infer multiparameter models of elastic material properties (S-wave velocity, P-wave velocity and mass density) of the shallow subsurface with high resolution. Previous studies used either the refracted Pwaves to reconstructed models of P-wave velocity or the high-amplitude Rayleigh waves to infer the S-wave velocity structure. In this work, we propose a combination of both wavefields using continuous time–frequency windowing. We start with the contribution of refracted P waves and gradually increase the time window to account for scattered body waves, higher mode Rayleigh waves and finally the fundamental Rayleigh wave mode. The opening of the time window is combined with opening the frequency bandwidth of input signals to avoid cycle skipping. Synthetic reconstruction tests revealed that the reconstruction of P-wave velocity model and mass density can be improved. The S-wave velocity reconstruction is still accurate and robust and is slightly benefitted by time–frequency windowing. In a field data application, we observed that time–frequency windowing improves the consistency of multiparameter models. The inferred models are in good agreement with independent geophysical information obtained from ground-penetrating radar and full-waveform inversion of SH waves.

2020 ◽  
Vol 222 (1) ◽  
pp. 560-571
Author(s):  
Lingli Gao ◽  
Yudi Pan ◽  
Thomas Bohlen

SUMMARY 2-D full-waveform inversion (FWI) of shallow-seismic wavefields has recently become a novel way to reconstruct S-wave velocity models of the shallow subsurface with high vertical and lateral resolution. In most applications, seismic wave attenuation is ignored or considered as a passive modelling parameter only. In this study, we explore the feasibility and performance of multiparameter viscoelastic 2-D FWI in which seismic velocities and attenuation of P and S waves, respectively, and mass density are inverted simultaneously. Synthetic reconstruction experiments reveal that multiple crosstalks between all viscoelastic material parameters may occur. The reconstruction of S-wave velocity is always robust and of high quality. The parameters P-wave velocity and density exhibit weaker sensitivity and can be reconstructed more reliably by multiparameter viscoelastic FWI. Anomalies in S-wave attenuation can be recovered but with limited resolution. In a field-data application, a small-scale refilled trench is nicely delineated as a low P- and S-wave velocity anomaly. The reconstruction of P-wave velocity is improved by the simultaneous inversion of attenuation. The reconstructed S-wave attenuation reveals higher attenuation in the shallow weathering zone and weaker attenuation below. The variations in the reconstructed P- and S-wave velocity models are consistent with the reflectivity observed in a ground penetrating radar (GPR) profile.


Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. R185-R206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wenyong Pan ◽  
Kristopher A. Innanen ◽  
Yu Geng ◽  
Junxiao Li

Simultaneous determination of multiple physical parameters using full-waveform inversion (FWI) suffers from interparameter trade-off difficulties. Analyzing the interparameter trade-offs in different model parameterizations of isotropic-elastic FWI, and thus determining the appropriate model parameterization, are critical for efficient inversion and obtaining reliable inverted models. Five different model parameterizations are considered and compared including velocity-density, modulus-density, impedance-density, and two velocity-impedance parameterizations. The scattering radiation patterns are first used for interparameter trade-off analysis. Furthermore, a new framework is developed to evaluate the interparameter trade-off based upon multiparameter Hessian-vector products: Multiparameter point spread functions (MPSFs) and interparameter contamination sensitivity kernels (ICSKs), which provide quantitative, second-order measurements of the interparameter contaminations. In the numerical experiments, the interparameter trade-offs in various model parameterizations are evaluated using the MPSFs and ICSKs. Inversion experiments are carried out with simple Gaussian-anomaly models and a complex Marmousi model. Overall, the parameterization of the P-wave velocity, S-wave velocity, and density, and the parameterization of the P-wave velocity, S-wave velocity, and S-wave impedance perform best for reconstructing all of the physical parameters. Isotropic-elastic FWI of the Hussar low-frequency data set with various model parameterizations verifies our conclusions.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tan Qin ◽  
Thomas Bohlen ◽  
Yudi Pan

<p>Shallow-seismic surface wave and ground penetrating radar (GPR) are employed in a wide range of engineering and geosciences applications. Full-waveform inversion (FWI) of either seismic or multi-offset GPR data are able to provide high-resolution subsurface characterization and have received particular attention in the past decade. Those two geophysical methods are involved in the increasing requirements of comprehensive site and material investigations. However, it is still challenging to provide an effective integration between seismic data and electromagnetic data. In this paper, we investigated the joint petrophysical inversion (JPI) of shallow-seismic and multi-offset GPR data for more consistent imaging of near surface. As a bridge between the seismic parameters (P-wave velocity, S-wave velocity, and density) and GPR parameters (relative dielectric permittivity and electric conductivity), the petrophysical relationships with the parameters namely porosity and saturation are employed to link two data sets. We first did a sensitivity analysis of the petrophysical parameters to the seismic and GPR parameters and then determined an efficient integration of using shallow-seismic FWI to update porosity and GPR FWI to update saturation, respectively. A comparison of several parameterisation combinations shows that the seismic velocity parameterisation in shallow-seismic FWI and a modified logarithm parameterisation in GPR FWI works well in reconstructing reliable S-wave velocity and relative dielectric permittivity models, respectively. With the help from the petrophysical links, we realized JPI by transforming those well recovered parameters to the petrophysical parameters and then to other seismic and GPR parameters. A synthetic test indicates that, compared with the individual petrophysical inversion and individual FWI, JPI outperforms in simultaneously reconstructing all seismic, GPR, and petrophysical parameters with higher resolution and improved details. It is proved that JPI would be a potential data integration approach for the shallow subsurface investigation.</p>


Geophysics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. R99-R123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhiming Ren ◽  
Yang Liu

Elastic full-waveform inversion (FWI) updates model parameters by minimizing the residuals of the P- and S-wavefields, resulting in more local minima and serious nonlinearity. In addition, the coupling of different parameters degrades the inversion results. To address these problems, we have developed a hierarchical elastic FWI scheme based on wavefield separation and a multistep-length gradient approach. First, we have derived the gradients expressed by different wave modes; analyzed the crosstalk between various parameters; and evaluated the sensitivity of separated P-wave, separated S-wave, and P- and S-wave misfit functions. Then, a practical four-stage inversion workflow was developed. In the first stage, conventional FWI is used to achieve rough estimates of the P- and S-wave velocities. In the second stage, we only invert the P-wave velocity applying the separated P-wavefields when strong S-wave energy is involved, or we merely update the S-wave velocity by matching the separated S-wavefields for the weak S-wave case. The PP and PS gradient formulas are used in these two cases, respectively. Therefore, the nonlinearity of inversion and the crosstalk between parameters are greatly reduced. In the third stage, the multistep-length gradient scheme is adopted. The density structure can be improved owing to the use of individual step lengths for different parameters. In the fourth stage, we make minor adjustments to the recovered P- and S-wave velocities and density by implementing conventional FWI again. Synthetic examples have determined that our hierarchical FWI scheme with the aforementioned steps obtains more plausible models than the conventional method. Inversion results of each stage and any three stages reveal that wavefield decomposition and the multistep-length approach are helpful to improve the accuracy of velocities and density, respectively, and all the stages of our hierarchical FWI method are necessary to give a good recovery of P- and S-wave velocities and density.


Geophysics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-52
Author(s):  
Yuzhu Liu ◽  
Xinquan Huang ◽  
Jizhong Yang ◽  
Xueyi Liu ◽  
Bin Li ◽  
...  

Thin sand-mud-coal interbedded layers and multiples caused by shallow water pose great challenges to conventional 3D multi-channel seismic techniques used to detect the deeply buried reservoirs in the Qiuyue field. In 2017, a dense ocean-bottom seismometer (OBS) acquisition program acquired a four-component dataset in East China Sea. To delineate the deep reservoir structures in the Qiuyue field, we applied a full-waveform inversion (FWI) workflow to this dense four-component OBS dataset. After preprocessing, including receiver geometry correction, moveout correction, component rotation, and energy transformation from 3D to 2D, a preconditioned first-arrival traveltime tomography based on an improved scattering integral algorithm is applied to construct an initial P-wave velocity model. To eliminate the influence of the wavelet estimation process, a convolutional-wavefield-based objective function for the preprocessed hydrophone component is used during acoustic FWI. By inverting the waveforms associated with early arrivals, a relatively high-resolution underground P-wave velocity model is obtained, with updates at 2.0 km and 4.7 km depth. Initial S-wave velocity and density models are then constructed based on their prior relationships to the P-wave velocity, accompanied by a reciprocal source-independent elastic full-waveform inversion to refine both velocity models. Compared to a traditional workflow, guided by stacking velocity analysis or migration velocity analysis, and using only the pressure component or other single-component, the workflow presented in this study represents a good approach for inverting the four-component OBS dataset to characterize sub-seafloor velocity structures.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-158
Author(s):  
Ionelia Panea

Results are presented for shallow seismic reflection measurements performed southwest of Săcel village in Romania for the purpose of obtaining information about the geological structure in the near subsurface. The P-wave and S-wave velocity distributions were also obtained below the soil surface. The measurements were performed along a nearly linear profile on the top of an elongated hill. Most of the shot gathers were characterized by a good signal-to-noise ratio. A depth-converted migrated section was obtained after the processing of shot gathers, on which an image of sedimentary deposits with various thicknesses, separated by shallow faults until a depth of about 80 m, were observed. The P-wave and S-wave velocity-depth models for two segments were of considerable interest for a geotechnical study proposed for the construction of a windmill park. The two- and three-layered P-wave velocity-depth models were comparable until depths of about 10 m after first-arrival traveltime inversions. The lateral variations in the subsurface geological structure and lithology reflected the variations in the P-wave velocity values from both models. The S-wave velocity-depth models for comparable depth intervals were similar to those from the P-wave velocity-depth models. Reliable S-wave velocity distributions were obtained after inversion of fundamental-mode and higher-mode surface waves.


Geophysics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. R271-R293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno V. da Silva ◽  
Gang Yao ◽  
Michael Warner

Full-waveform inversion deals with estimating physical properties of the earth’s subsurface by matching simulated to recorded seismic data. Intrinsic attenuation in the medium leads to the dispersion of propagating waves and the absorption of energy — media with this type of rheology are not perfectly elastic. Accounting for that effect is necessary to simulate wave propagation in realistic geologic media, leading to the need to estimate intrinsic attenuation from the seismic data. That increases the complexity of the constitutive laws leading to additional issues related to the ill-posed nature of the inverse problem. In particular, the joint estimation of several physical properties increases the null space of the parameter space, leading to a larger domain of ambiguity and increasing the number of different models that can equally well explain the data. We have evaluated a method for the joint inversion of velocity and intrinsic attenuation using semiglobal inversion; this combines quantum particle-swarm optimization for the estimation of the intrinsic attenuation with nested gradient-descent iterations for the estimation of the P-wave velocity. This approach takes advantage of the fact that some physical properties, and in particular the intrinsic attenuation, can be represented using a reduced basis, substantially decreasing the dimension of the search space. We determine the feasibility of the method and its robustness to ambiguity with 2D synthetic examples. The 3D inversion of a field data set for a geologic medium with transversely isotropic anisotropy in velocity indicates the feasibility of the method for inverting large-scale real seismic data and improving the data fitting. The principal benefits of the semiglobal multiparameter inversion are the recovery of the intrinsic attenuation from the data and the recovery of the true undispersed infinite-frequency P-wave velocity, while mitigating ambiguity between the estimated parameters.


Geophysics ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. R109-R117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Groos ◽  
Martin Schäfer ◽  
Thomas Forbriger ◽  
Thomas Bohlen

The S-wave velocity of the shallow subsurface can be inferred from shallow-seismic Rayleigh waves. Traditionally, the dispersion curves of the Rayleigh waves are inverted to obtain the (local) S-wave velocity as a function of depth. Two-dimensional elastic full-waveform inversion (FWI) has the potential to also infer lateral variations. We have developed a novel workflow for the application of 2D elastic FWI to recorded surface waves. During the preprocessing, we apply a line-source simulation (spreading correction) and perform an a priori estimation of the attenuation of waves. The iterative multiscale 2D elastic FWI workflow consists of the preconditioning of the gradients in the vicinity of the sources and a source-wavelet correction. The misfit is defined by the least-squares norm of normalized wavefields. We apply our workflow to a field data set that has been acquired on a predominantly depth-dependent velocity structure, and we compare the reconstructed S-wave velocity model with the result obtained by a 1D inversion based on wavefield spectra (Fourier-Bessel expansion coefficients). The 2D S-wave velocity model obtained by FWI shows an overall depth dependency that agrees well with the 1D inversion result. Both models can explain the main characteristics of the recorded seismograms. The small lateral variations in S-wave velocity introduced by FWI additionally explain the lateral changes of the recorded Rayleigh waves. The comparison thus verifies the applicability of our 2D FWI workflow and confirms the potential of FWI to reconstruct shallow small-scale lateral changes of S-wave velocity.


Geophysics ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 78 (3) ◽  
pp. B131-B146 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manuel Queißer ◽  
Satish C. Singh

The presence of injected [Formula: see text] in the Utsira Sand at the Sleipner site, Norway, is associated with a high negative P-wave velocity anomaly; that is, a low postinjection velocity and a strong seismic response. Time-lapse seismic imaging of [Formula: see text] injection at Sleipner is thus a viable monitoring tool of the injected [Formula: see text]. The work flow usually involves conventional seismic processing, including stacking, and results in seismic images. Multiple reflections, interference effects such as tuning, and the velocity pushdown effect due to [Formula: see text] injection render these seismic images ambiguous in terms of the localization and the quantification of the [Formula: see text] in the Utsira Sand. Nonetheless, seismic images often form the basis for analyses that aim to quantify the injected [Formula: see text]. We employed elastic 2D full waveform inversion to invert prestack seismic Sleipner data from preinjection (1994) and postinjection (1999) and compared the resulting postinjection P-wave velocity model with the corresponding seismic image. We found that the high-amplitude reflections in the seismic image do not everywhere coincide with low postinjection P-wave velocities. Drawing extensive and integrated conclusions is out of our scope, because this would require full control over the seismic data processing and a more comprehensive forward modeling. For instance, modeling should be done in 3D and an adequate anelasticity formulation should be added. However, the waveform inversion scheme we used accounts for all the aforementioned elastic propagation effects. The results therefore suggested that the exclusive use of seismic images to quantify [Formula: see text] could be revised and full waveform inversion should be added to the analysis toolbox.


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