Dear Dr. Kuo Zhang,

Thanks for your time and contribution

Dear Patrice:

There are 3 basic steps in seismic works, chronologically such as:

1) Design and Acquisition.

2) Processing the data, from 1).

3) Interpretation the data, from 2).

The objective of the point 2), seismic processing (your question) is to try to convert the acquired seismic data (using artificial “earthquakes” source: impulsive / vibrators / air-gun; and several receivers: geophones / hydrophones) to a seismic image.

Due that the data are recorder in time-sequences, and you use the multiple-fold coverage, you need to re-order the field data by CMP / CDP. Therefore, the basic processing sequence usually involves the following steps: Read the acquired data and assign its geometry; amplitude recovery; deconvolution, noise filtering; static corrections; rearrangement of traces by CMP; velocity analysis; correction for normal move-out NMO; residual static; Stacking; Migration.

On the other hand, you are talking about seismic interpretation, the third step. I recommend to read this wonderfull synthesis by Alistair Brown, AAPG, only 4 pages, a clear ideas, a better understanding what we (me too) do everyday.

If you are interesting to find a little more knowlegde, there are a lot of papers and books ... but please, you do not try to start with Oz Yilmaz´s bible for example ...a lot !!!!!!

Cheers, Mario E. Sigismondi

Dear Dr. Mario Emilio Sigismondi,

I am very grateful for your insightful contents.

Patrice,

I can tell you were looking for a basic answer, and I think Mario Sigismondi gave you some very good information. For a long time the three stages he refers to were very separate, different geophysicist specialists would do each part and more or less just hand it to over to the next. There always was some interpretation in processing (e.g. statics models and stacking velocity analysis come to mind), but with the dramatic increase in available computer power of interpretation workstations, the amount of processing in interpretation has grown much larger.

One of the main areas that processing and interpretation overlap is conversion from time to depth. Processing information (such as migration velocities) can be used, but it is better to add interpreted surfaces and well control. Interpretation workstations can do this and a great deal of other processing, for example calibrated amplitude volumes (and other "attributes") to answer specific interpretation problems.

The amount of interpretation in processing has increased for structurally complex areas (better models can be used to stack and migrate data that could not be imaged before). And not to forget that if processing and interpretation considerations for the specific area are not included in the acquisition parameters, you may get nothing that anyone can work with.

If you are going into exploration geophysics, please learn as much as possible about all three stages before you specialize.

Regards,

Jim Ballard

Dear Mr. Jim Ballard,

Really appreciate your remarkable contribution.

With king regards,