Quick Search:    advanced search

GSW Home   GeoRef Home   My GSW Alerts   Contact GSW   About GSW   Journals List   Help

This Article Full Text Full Text (PDF) Submit a response Alert me when this article is cited Alert me when eLetters are posted Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Liner, C. L. Search for Related Content

Seismic processing 1982–2002

TLE Editorial Board

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

On the occasion of THE LEADING EDGE'S 20th anniversary, it seems appropriate to pause and consider progress in our science over that period of time. My topic is seismic data processing, and many of the advances discussed here were published first in GEOPHYSICS or other peer-reviewed journals, then appeared in more digestible form in the pages of TLE. This is an important role TLE continues to play.

The first thing to consider is the scope of the assignment. The last 20 years have seen 267 monthly or bimonthly issues of GEOPHYSICS, which I will use as a gauge of progress. Conservatively estimating 10 papers per issue related to seismic topics, it follows that something like 2700 individual papers span the period. Any thought of a detailed account must be abandoned.

Furthermore, it is not feasible for this reviewer to reread all the papers, or the abstracts, or even the titles. In other words, I am left to summarize this mass of material based on the impressions of someone who has been involved in data processing teaching and research for these 20 years. Are there people better qualified to do this? Certainly. Would their accounts be different? In detail, undoubtedly; in broad scope, probably not. As I imagine any reviewer would, I will touch here on the "first-order" advances in seismic data processing, those things that have changed the way the work is done around the world every day.

First a distinction. By seismic data processing, I mean any computational technique that attempts to remove noise or wave propagation effects in order to create an image of the subsurface. Once this image is created, there is another universe of methods to mine the data for further information.

Examples include attribute analysis, coherency, . . . [Full Text of this Article]