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The Leading Edge; January 2001; v. 20; no. 1; p. 80-84; DOI: 10.1190/1.1438886
© 2001 Society of Exploration Geophysicists
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Imaging of an Alberta foothills seismic survey

Lanlan Yan and Larry Lines

University of Calgary

Corresponding authors: lyan@geo.ucalgary.ca and lines@geo.ucalgary.ca

The first 20% of the full text of this article appears below.

This case history is a story of the trials and tribulations encountered in our quest to produce a viable interpretation of seismic data from western Alberta, Canada. We summarize the many modeling and data processing steps used to produce a final depth image in the hope that this will help others who venture into imaging foothills data.

The structural geology of the Alberta Foothills is dominated by a series of thrust faults, complex folds, and steeply dipping formations. (For a complete description of folds, faults, triangle zones, and structural traps in the Foothills, refer to the article by Newson in this issue of TLE.) Seismic migration is essential for sufficient understanding of the geometry of such structures and consequently for optimizing chances of exploration success in such geologically complicated areas.

This study tested three popular imaging methods—Kirchhoff, reverse-time, and f-x depth migration—using data from a study area in the central Alberta Foothills called the Shaw Basing area (Figure 1). Gary Taylor of Mobil Oil Canada provided a seismic line in this area, which is in the triangle zone at the leading edge of the Rocky Mountain Fold and Thrust Belt, between the Athabasca and North Saskatchewan Rivers, northwest of the town of Nordegg.


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  		Figure 1. Map of the study area.

 
Seismic data acquired in very complicated geologic areas, such as the steeply dipping thrust belts in the Alberta Foothills, possess inherent problems for the conventional process of NMO/DMO/stack followed by poststack migration. Prestack depth migration, which makes fewer incorrect assumptions about wave propagation in the earth than other imaging methods, can provide correct subsurface images, but this technique is very sensitive to the accuracy of the velocity model. As a result, prestack depth migration is essentially iterative/interpretive, and velocity analysis must be carried out throughout the whole procedure. Poststack . . . [Full Text of this Article]






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