Multimodal dispersion curves extracted from deep seismic sounding
profile to characterize the sedimentary structure
Abstract
Thousands of deep seismic sounding profiles have been obtained worldwide
to detect crustal and lithospheric structures; unfortunately, fine
near-surface/shallow sedimentary structures are difficult to determine
through large-scale seismic surveys. To improve the near-surface/shallow
sedimentary structure resolution, we extract multimodal dispersion
curves with the frequency-Bessel transform (F-J) method from deep
seismic sounding profiles in the Atlantic coastal plain and explore the
joint inversion of multimodal dispersion curves and refraction.
Three-layer sedimentary structures of the Atlantic coastal plain, which
are highly consistent with drillhole data, are obtained by joint
inversion with the Monte Carlo method. In the preferred sedimentary
structure, the second layer of the models is identified mainly by the
P-wave refraction, while the velocity discontinuity and shallower
velocity are sensitive mostly to the multimodal dispersion curves.
Although the dispersion curves are not sensitive to the second layer of
the models, the pattern of the F-J spectrogram can be greatly influenced
by the second layer. The preferred sedimentary models exhibit an
extremely low sedimentary Vp/Vs ratio, which has a profound influence on
the dispersion curves. The inversion of dispersion curves would lead to
incorrect results without the Vp/Vs ratio constrained by P- and S-wave
refractions. These results demonstrate that the F-J method is an
effective approach to extract multimodal dispersion curves from deep
seismic sounding data and that an accurate fine sedimentary structure
can be obtained by the joint inversion of multimodal dispersion curves
and refraction.