Geophysical Prospecting最新文献

Accurate depth estimation is crucial for the quantitative interpretation of magnetic anomalies, which plays a significant role in geological mapping, mineral exploration and subsurface investigations. Traditional depth estimation techniques, such as the contact-depth (CD) and tilt-depth (TD) methods, often suffer from the generation of spurious solutions, especially when applied to complex geological environments. To address this, we propose an enhanced depth estimation technique, namely, the located contact-depth (LCD) method that integrates the CD technique with the enhanced horizontal gradient amplitude (EHGA). By utilizing points near the peaks of EHGA, a mask is generated to constrain the solutions from the CD method, effectively eliminating false solutions. Furthermore, a stable finite-difference technique for calculating vertical derivatives is used to improve the robustness and stability of the outputs. The proposed technique is tested on synthetic data, both with and without noise, as well as on real aeromagnetic data from the Galinge Fe-polymetallic deposit (China). The results demonstrate that our method provides depth estimates with improved reliability and accuracy compared to traditional methods, reducing the number of spurious solutions and enhancing precision around source boundaries. The result from the real example is in good agreement with known structures, highlighting the potential for deep mineral exploration in the Galinge Fe-polymetallic deposit.

The brittleness of a caprock layer is an important property to measure, as it influences sealing integrity for subsurface fluid injection projects. However, brittleness is a complex function of various factors, such as mineral composition, diagenesis and effective stress, and consequently can vary spatially. Because well log-based methods for brittleness estimation are often spatially limited, we develop a simple workflow to estimate the brittleness of a shale formation directly from seismic data. The shale in question is the Draupne Formation of the Upper Jurassic age, which acts as a primary seal of Viking Group sandstones in the Horda Platform area of the northern North Sea for hydrocarbon extraction (e.g., the Troll field) and geological CO₂ storage (e.g., Smeaheia). First, well log data from 26 wells in the Horda Platform area is aggregated, focusing on the compressional sonic, bulk density and resistivity values of the Draupne Formation. This data are used to establish a linear model relating the acoustic impedance and elastic properties-estimated brittleness index (BI) of the Draupne Formation; these two quantities display a correlation of 0.86. By combining this acoustic impedance information with a wavelet extracted from field seismic data and using average acoustic properties for the relatively homogeneous underlying sandstone reservoir, synthetic seismograms corresponding to different BI values of the Draupne Formation are generated. The amplitudes extracted from the synthetic seismograms are then used to establish a quadratic model relating seismic amplitudes at the base Draupne reflection with the BI. Applying this quadratic model on a 2D seismic line from the Stord Basin (south of the Horda Platform) results in BI values that are close to elastic-properties-based values at wells which intersect the seismic line and an expected trend of increasing brittleness with respect to depth. This integrated method can be used as part of a workflow to characterize top seal effectiveness, which may be useful in fluid storage prospect evaluation.

Image-domain least-squares migration (IDLSM), which typically employs a diagonally dominant Hessian with narrow bandwidth for the inverse problem, provides an efficient deconvolution strategy for subsurface reflectivity imaging. Conventional methods often rely on the adjoint of the Born/Kirchhoff modelling operator to compute the Hessian matrix. However, the adjoint-derived Hessian is highly ill-conditioned, leading to slow convergence during linear inversion and resulting in images with undesired resolution and amplitude fidelity. To overcome these limitations, this study introduces a novel IDLSM approach that integrates the state-of-the-art migration operator. We derive and compute the preconditioned Hessian matrix through a Kirchhoff migration engine with source-side and receiver-side illumination. The preconditioned Hessian matrix exhibits identical values along its main diagonal. This illumination compensation will explicitly reduce the condition number of the Hessian matrix and significantly improve the quality of migrated images in terms of amplitude fidelity. In addition, we remove redundant source wavelets from the migrated image and the Hessian matrix. As a result, these improvements will greatly accelerate the convergence of linear inversion solvers while enhancing the resolution and amplitude fidelity of the resulting images. Experiments on synthetic and field datasets demonstrate that the proposed IDLSM method retrieves high-fidelity reflectivity images with superior resolution and amplitude fidelity compared to conventional IDLSM techniques.

Seismic reflection traveltime tomography (RTT) is an effective technique for inverting subsurface low-frequency velocity models for prestack depth migration and full-waveform inversion of seismic data. However, the velocity model established using RTT demonstrates limited resolution for extremely shallow and deeply complex strata. Small-offset first-arrival wave effectively characterize velocity variations in shallow strata, whereas large-offset first-arrival wave can reflect the velocity distribution in deeper strata. Therefore, we propose a three-dimensional joint tomographic inversion of first-arrival and reflection waves based on the adjoint state method in this article. The method integrates first-arrival traveltime data, reflection traveltime data and slope data for inversion, enhancing the accuracy of the inversion model from shallow to deep. The adjoint state method is employed to calculate the gradient of the misfit function with respect to velocity and the spatial coordinates of reflection points, thereby reducing the computational memory requirements and improving the efficiency of velocity modelling. The results of synthetic data tests based on a theoretical model verify the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed joint inversion method. The proposed method is applied to ocean bottom node and ocean bottom cable wide-line seismic data collected in an extremely shallow sea in eastern China, yielding a more accurate velocity model.

The seismoelectric effect is an electrokinetic phenomenon that arises when seismic waves propagate in water-containing geological formations. Given that seismoelectric signals are sensitive to the hydraulic properties of the probed porous medium, they have the capability to provide important information during subsurface characterization efforts. In this work, we present a physics-based model for the dynamic streaming potential coupling coefficient (SPCC) in partially saturated porous media. For this, we conceptualize the porous medium as a partially saturated bundle of capillary tubes. We take into account the variation of pore size to relate the capillary pressure to the water saturation in the porous medium of interest. We then up-scale the streaming current and conduction current within the saturated capillaries under oscillatory flow conditions from pore to sample scale. The results show that the dynamic SPCC is not only a function of water saturation and the probing frequencies but also of the properties of water, mineral–water interfaces and other microstructural parameters of the porous medium. We analyse and explain the characteristics of the dynamic SPCC for two different pore size distributions (PSD): fractal and lognormal. Results show that the PSD characteristics have a strong effect on the dynamic SPCC responses. The proposed model has a remarkable ability to replicate experimental data available in the literature. In addition, it is observed that the lognormal distribution can provide a better agreement with experimental data for sand samples, which display a relatively narrow PSD. The findings of this study provide a valuable basis for interpreting seismoelectric signals under partially saturated conditions. Our proposed technique can be applied to any PSD, regardless of the complexity, providing a flexibility that is not present in alternative models found in the literature.