MARGO 2709

Marine Geology 164 (2000) 2935 www.elsevier.nl/locate/margeo

A single-channel seismic reection method for quantifying lateral variations in BSR reectivity
T.M. McGee*
Marine Minerals Technology Center, University of Mississippi, 220 Old Chemistry Building, University, MS 38677, USA Received 9 July 1998; received in revised form 15 December 1998; accepted 5 February 1999

Abstract Results of seismic inversion techniques and logs of deep-sea bore holes indicate that bottom simulating reectors (BSRs) which exhibit high reection amplitudes are underlain by a thin layer of free gas. Often, however, BSRs exhibit relatively low amplitudes and display signicant lateral variability. In these cases the structure is not well understood and remains a topic of research. Waveform inversion has been used to investigate the distribution of propagation speeds in the vicinity of BSRs, but the technique is not practical in some situations because it requires multi-channel data sets that include large offset distances between sources and receivers. Such data are not available in many instances, so it has become attractive to consider other methods of achieving the same end. A method that is applicable to single-channel, short-offset data is discussed here. It was originally developed to help characterize shallow submarine sediments for engineering and environmental purposes. Of course, no single-channel method can provide information concerning speeds of propagation such as is available from multi-channel methods. In this case the single-channel method has an advantage, however, in that it is self-calibrating. That allows it to provide, after correction for wave-front divergence, true reection amplitudes without considering source characteristics or referencing to a known, or inferred, propagation parameter such as speed or density. These true amplitudes then yield reection coefcients by correcting for transmission losses. Use of the method is illustrated with the help of synthetic data. It is demonstrated that the accuracy of results is improved by using a rapid digitizing rate during data acquisition. The method is then applied to a set of real data that previously had been analyzed by full-waveform inversion. The results are noisy, largely due to the data having been digitized at a rather slow rate and the length of recording being too short; however, average values of reection coefcients at the sea oor and the BSR compare well with average values obtained by the inversion procedure. It is concluded that the single-channel method provides reasonable values for reection coefcients. This suggests that, with judicious constraints on density variations, single-channel data could provide information on the structure of propagation speed in the vicinity of BSRs. Moreover, it would involve substantially less effort than is required for full-waveform inversion. 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Gas hydrates; Bottom simulating reector; Reection coefcient; Deconvolution

1. Introduction Under proper conditions, the base of the gas hydrate stability zone in marine sediments is marked by a bottom simulating reector (BSR). For this reason,

* Tel.: 1-662-915-7320; fax: 1-662-915-5625. E-mail address: tmm@mmri.olemiss.edu (T.M. McGee). 0025-3227/00/$ - see front matter PII: S0025-322 7(99)00124-3

2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

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BSRs are commonly relied upon as indicators of gas hydrates in the sea oor. The distribution of propagation speeds in the vicinity of BSRs, as revealed by seismic reectivity, has been investigated at several locations worldwide by applying full-waveform inversion to multi-offset reection data. Results from several locations indicate that BSRs characterized by high reection amplitudes are underlain by a thin layer of free gas (Singh et al., 1993). This has been conrmed by drilling (MacKay et al., 1994; Holbrook et al., 1996). Reections from BSRs are not always high amplitude, however, and they commonly display strong lateral variability. The reasons for this are not well understood. The use of waveform inversion to investigate BSRs is limited due to the requirement of relatively large source/receiver offset distances. The method also involves a signicant level of effort for processing and interpretation. This paper discusses a method for determining variations in BSR reectivity that is fast and applicable to single-channel data. The method was originally developed for environmental and engineering applications as part of the European Communities MAST-1 Project GISP (Theilen et al., 1993). It requires that the source/receiver offset distance be small compared to the water depth and that reector dips not exceed a few degrees; prerequisites which are usually satised in the context of BSRs. It also requires that the data be recorded digitally until the onset of the second water-layer multiple; a prerequisite that is satised less often. The method produces best results if the water is deep enough that the so-called primary sequence, i.e. the water-bottom reection and the coda that follows it (including shallow subsurface reections, the BSR and attendant interbed multiples) decay to insignicance prior to the onset of the rst waterlayer multiple. Also, results are improved if digitization is done at a rapid rate, i.e. fast enough to place at least 10 samples within the dominant wavelength of the seismic signal. This improves the coherence between the primary sequence and the analogous rst multiple sequence that begins with the rst water-layer multiple of the water-bottom reection. If the coherence is high enough, a deconvolution of the rst multiple sequence to the primary sequence compensates for the source pulse and provides, after

correction for wave front divergence, a measure of the true amplitude of each reected arrival. These true amplitudes then yield reection coefcients when corrected for transmission losses.

2. The single-channel method If the signal-to-noise ratio is high, the frequency domain representation of the primary sequence, P f ; may be approximated as a multiplication of the spectral response of the system, S f ; with that of the geologic layering, G f ; i.e.: P f S f G f 1

Under calm conditions, the surface of the water is a nearly perfect (negative) reector which reects the upward traveling primary sequence back toward the sea oor to produce what is called a water-layer multiple. Each time the sequence of propagating wavelets is reected from the water surface, the effect of the sea oor and subbottom layers can be represented in the frequency domain as an additional multiplication by G f ; the minus sign accounting for the polarity reversal that accompanies reection from the underside of the water surface. Thus the spectrum of the rst multiple sequence can be written: M f S f G f G f 2

At frequencies for which P f is not zero, Eq. (2) may be divided by Eq. (1) to obtain the negative of the spectral response of the geologic layering: M f =P f G f 3

which may be inversely transformed to obtain a time series containing the negative of the true amplitudes of primary reections from the sea oor and subbottom interfaces. This time series also contains multiple reections internal to the geologic layers, so some interpretation is required to identify the primary reections. After that is done, the reection coefcient of any layer interface may be determined by dividing the true amplitude of the primary reection from that interface by the product of the transmission coefcients of all interfaces above it.

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Fig. 1. (a) Three portions of the two-layer synthetic reection seismogram described in the text. (b)(e) Convolutions of (a) with a real seismic source signature digitized at intervals of 1, 2, 3 and 4 ms, respectively. Note the progressive degradation of wavelet shape as the sampling becomes coarser.

3. Illustration using synthetic data The trace in Fig. 1(a) shows three intervals of a one-dimensional synthetic reection seismogram

calculated for two layers between half-spaces. Both source and receiver are located immediately below the surface of the upper layer. Two-way travel time through the upper layer is 3000 ms and that through

Fig. 2. Results of applying the single-channel method to the traces in Fig. 1. Note the negative polarity due to reection from the underside of the sea surface. Also note the progressive degradation of times of peak amplitudes as the sampling becomes coarser.

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Fig. 3. Subset of short-offset traces from a prole offshore Costa Rica. This prole has been analyzed using full-waveform inversion by Pecher et al. (1998). The sea oor reection, the BSR and the rst water-layer multiple are indicated.

the lower is 449 ms. Reection coefcients used in the calculations are 1.0 at the top of the upper layer (to simulate an airwater interface), 0.2 between the layers (to simulate a watersediment interface) and 0.5 at the bottom of the lower layer (to simulate a BSR). The magnitudes of the coefcients have been dened a bit larger than what would usually be realistic in order that the internal multiple between the two interfaces be clearly visible. Theoretical values of the true amplitudes of the synthetic primary reections are calculated to be 0.20 for the sea-oor reection and 0.48 for the BSR.

The traces of Fig. 1(b)(e) were created by convolving Fig. 1(a) with a real seismic source signature digitized at sampling intervals of 1, 2, 3, and 4 ms, respectively. It may be observed that the shape of the signature becomes progressively more degraded as the sampling becomes coarser. The trace of Fig. 1(d) is particularly noteworthy in this regard. The maximum (negative) excursion of the sea-oor reection appears truncated because no digital sample happens to coincide with it. The maximum (positive) excursion of the BSR is also distorted, but in a different way because the time between the BSR

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excursions are shifted to erroneous times and their amplitudes are as much as 20% in error.

4. Application to real data In order to compare results obtained with real data, the single-channel method described above was applied to short-offset traces from a multi-channel data set previously analyzed by Pecher et al. (1998) using full-waveform inversion. The data were acquired offshore Costa Rica in about 3 s of water at a location where a BSR occurs about 0.5 s below the sea oor. The source was a tuned airgun array and the received signals were digitized at a 4 ms sampling interval over a total recording time of 8 s. A gray-scale image of 57 short-offset traces from the data set is shown in Fig. 3. The sea oor reection occurs slightly below 3 s, the BSR at about 3.6 s and the rst water-layer multiple slightly below 6 s. The primary sequence extends from 3 to 6 s, approximately, and the rst multiple sequence would extend from slightly below 6 s to more than 9 s had the recording time been that long. Since calculation of the spectral quotient of Eq. (3) is greatly simplied when the numerator and denominator are of the same length, one second of zero values was appended to the data. Undoubtedly, this is a source of numerical noise and introduces some error into the results. In an effort to reduce such noise, data values at times greater than 7.8 s were linearly tapered to smooth the transition from non-zero to zero values. An enlarged portion of Fig. 3 is plotted in Fig. 4 as wiggle-traces to illustrate the waveforms that comprise the sea oor and BSR reections. It can be seen that the dominant period of the signal is about 25 m. This indicates a dominant frequency of about 40 Hz. The data in Fig. 3 were corrected for spherical spreading (at 1500 m/s which is close to the speed of propagation in water) and the spectral quotient of Eq. (3) computed after appending zeros to each trace. An enlarged portion of the output, Fig. 5, illustrates the waveforms from which true amplitudes were measured. The dominant period at the sea oor and the BSR remains 25 ms, indicating that the deconvolution was not able to collapse the waveform to any

Fig. 4. Enlarged portion of Fig. 3 plotted as wiggle traces.

and the sea-oor reection is not an integral multiple of the sampling interval. Such differences between digital waveforms degrade their coherence and constitute a source of processing error that is entirely due to the digitizing rate being inadequate. The traces in Fig. 2 display the result of applying the spectral division of Eq. (3) and inverse transformation to the traces in Fig. 1. Amplitudes on the trace of Fig. 2(a) occur at the correct times and are within 0.1% of the theoretical values except that they are negative due to the effect of the water surface. Amplitudes on traces of Fig. 2(b)(e) describe wavelets that are approximately symmetrical about their maximum excursions. The symmetry results from both primary and multiple wavelets having the same structure, i.e. that of the source signature, and the quotient in Eq. (3) being equivalent to a deconvolution of that structure. The symmetry degrades at coarser sampling rates due to reduced coherence between numerator and denominator of Eq. (3). When the degradation is negligible, i.e. Fig. 2(b), the maximum excursions occur near the correct onset times of the reected wavelets and the amplitudes are within a few percent of the theoretical values. When the degradation is substantial, as it is in Fig. 2(d) and (e), the times of the maximum

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Fig. 5. Enlarged portion of the output of the single-channel method applied to traces in Fig. 3.

Fig. 6. Prole of compressional speed versus depth estimated by Pecher et al. (1998) using full waveform inversion on multi-channel seismic data.

great extent. This is likely due to the data having been band-pass ltered with steep cut-off slopes to facilitate the rather slow digitizing rate. Comparing Fig. 5 with Fig. 4, it is clear that the output is noisier than the input. This is typical of situations in which the coherence between numerator and denominator of a spectral quotient is low. Spectral notches in the denominator are not balanced by those in the numerator and noise is generated at frequencies where large values are divided by small values. This could result from either the digitizing rate being too slow or the recording length being too short. The fact that both circumstances occur in this case only serves to exacerbate the problem. It is possible, however, to follow both the sea oor reection and the BSR from trace 1 to trace 40 in Fig. 5 and make amplitude measurements. Amplitude measurements on traces 2939 (the set over which the full-waveform inversion had been averaged) average to 0.114 for the sea oor reection and 0.059 for the BSR. Taking into account the polarity reversal and the transmission coefcient at the sea oor, the average reection coefcients are found to be 0.114 at the sea oor and 0.060 at the BSR.

5. Discussion and conclusions Application of the single-channel method to synthetic data shows that, if the digitizing rate is great enough, amplitudes and arrival times can be within a few percent of the values used to generate the synthetic traces. It also shows that the accuracies of both amplitudes and arrival times degrade rapidly as the digitizing rate is decreased. This leads to a conclusion that the accuracy of results is substantially reduced if the digital sampling rate is too slow. The reason is decreased coherency between individual. Pecher et al. (1998) initiated their full-waveform inversion of the multi-channel data set by determining the reection coefcient at the sea oor. They did this by dividing the amplitude of the rst water-layer multiple by that of the water-bottom reection (Hyndman and Spence, 1992; Andreassen et al., 1995). It was done on the two shortest-offset traces in common-mid-point gathers whose locations correspond to traces 2939 of the data subset shown in Fig. 3. The 22 values thus obtained averaged to 0.140. By correcting for transmission loss only at the sea oor, Pecher et al. (1998) assumed that the seaoor reection is generated solely by a change in

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density, i.e. that there is no change in speed of propagation across the water bottom, in order to produce proles of compressional speed versus depth. Fig. 6 shows such a prole at the location of trace 39. They then calculated a reection coefcient from the speed decrease at the BSR by assuming that there is no change in density across the BSR and obtained a value of 0.057. The single-channel method produces a reection coefcient of 0.060 at the BSR by correcting for transmission loss at the sea oor. These values are in good agreement. It should be noted, however, that the spectral quotient value was obtained without any assumptions concerning speed or density changes across either the sea oor or the BSR. It can be seen in Figs. 4 and 5 that some reected events occur between the sea oor and the BSR. If they are primary reections, they would represent transmission losses that should be included in the calculation and thereby increase the magnitude of the reection coefcient obtained for the BSR. The events in question are rather weak, so the increase would not be great, perhaps changing the quoted value to about 0.062, and there would still be good agreement with the value obtained by fullwaveform inversion. It is concluded that, given proper data acquisition, the spectral quotient method can produce reection coefcients that agree well with those produced by full-waveform inversion. If reasonable constraints are placed on density variations, the single-channel reection coefcients can then be used to study the structure of propagation speed in the vicinity of BSRs. Moreover, since only single-channel data are involved, such studies would

involve a signicantly lower level of effort than do multi-channel methods. Acknowledgements The assistance and encouragement of Ingo Pecher in performing this work and the suggestions of Karin Andreassen concerning the nal manuscript are gratefully acknowledged. References
Andreassen, K., Hart, P.E., Grantz, A., 1995. Seismic studies of a bottom simulating reector related to gas hydrate beneath the continental margin of the Beaufort Sea. J. Geophys. Res. 100, 1265912673. Holbrook, W.S., Hoskins, H., Wood, W.T., Stephen, R.A., Lizzarralde, D., 1996. Methane hydrate and free gas on the Blake Ridge from vertical seismic proling. Science 273, 18401843. Hyndman, R.D., Spence, G.D., 1992. A seismic study of methane hydrate marine bottom simulating reectors. J. Geophys. Res. 97, 66836698. MacKay, M.E., Jarrard, R.D., Westbrook, G.K., Hyndman, R.D., 1994. Origin of bottom simulating reectors: geophysical evidence from the Cascadia accretionary prism. Geology 22, 459462. Pecher, I.A., Ranero, C.R., von Huene, R., Minshull, T.A., Singh, S.C., 1998. The nature and distribution of bottom simulating reectors at the Costa Rican convergent cargin. Geophys. J. Int. 133, 219229. Singh, S.C., Minshull, T.A., Spence, G.D., 1993. Velocity Structure of a Gas Hydrate Reector. Science 260, 204207. Theilen, Fr., Ollier, G., McGee, T.M., Brussaard, P., De Batist, M., Missiaen, T., Ori, G.G., Perini, L., Kogler, F.-Chr., Neben, S., Omlin, A. 1993. GISPGeophysical In-Situ Probe, Final Report for Contract CT90-0057 of the European Communities MAST-1 Programme.