Techniques and methods of seismic data processing in active volcanic areas: some applications to multichannel seismic profiles (Gulf of Naples, Southern Tyrrhenian sea, Italy)

The techniques of seismic surveying, especially reflection seismic, considerably varied during last year’s. The contribution to this variation mainly came from the oil industry, which has developed the geophysical methods for oil searching. The basic techniques of seismic exploration consist of the generation of seismic waves artificially in the ground (source) and of the measurement of the requested times to cover the source-receiver path. Seismic data processing of three multichannel seismic profiles located in the Gulf of Naples for an overall length of 150 kilometers is herein presented. The techniques of seismic processing used for the elaboration of the seismic data are up-to-date. Some of them are based on complex mathematical models, allowing obtaining good velocity analysis for the production of stacked sections, ready to be interpreted. In this paper the procedures of processing of multichannel seismic data starting from the field data are shown. Sketch diagrams of the elaboration processes applied during several phases of the whole processing have been constructed. The used software are the Promax2D (Landmark Ltd.) and the Seismic Unix (Colorado School of Mines). The steps of the seismic data processes included the pre-processing, the sorting, the velocity analysis, the normal move-out (NMO), the stacking, the band-pass filtering, the multiple removals, the predictive de-convolution and the spiking de-convolution.