Abstract
Accurate geological modeling of subsurface structures with all available geophysical data is a challenging task in geo-exploration studies. Concern in precise modeling will increase by increasing geological complexity of subsurface structures such as salt dome. Integrating various sources of geophysical data will reduce uncertainty in geological modeling in complex media. In this study, we introduce an integrated strategy for more appropriate detection of salt boundary in seismic image, by applying the normalized full gradient (NFG) method, used in processing of potential field data. In the proposed strategy, we initially, analyzed sensitivity of the NFG parameters by derivation of a synthetic model. Parameter analysis and optimization showed dependency of geometrical properties of the geological target to the harmonic number in the NFG method. Afterwards, seismic traces were processed by the NFG method. Results showed increase in vertical resolution of seismic envelope compared to the result of the well-known Hilbert Transform. The proposed strategy was applied on a synthetic seismic data contains complex salt model. Results have shown that application of the proposed strategy produced higher resolution seismic image compared to the Hilbert Transform method. The method also was applied on a field seismic data with a complex salt dome from southwest of Kazakhstan. Seismic image obtained by the integration procedure could better exhibit body of the salt dome, as well as better interpretation of faults, layer boundary truncation, salt bottom and subsalt layers. Thus, it was concluded that the proposed strategy could be considered as an alternative to resolve some of ambiguities in geological interpretation of seismic data in complex geological settings.
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Soleimani, M., Aghajani, H. & Heydari-Nejad, S. Salt dome boundary detection in seismic image via resolution enhancement by the improved NFG method. Acta Geod Geophys 53, 463–478 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40328-018-0222-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40328-018-0222-3