3-D S Wave Imaging via Robust Neural Network Interpolation of 2-D
Profiles from Wave equation Dispersion Inversion of Seismic Ambient
Noise
Abstract
Ambient noise seismic data are widely used by geophysicists to explore
subsurface properties at crustal and exploration scales. Two-step
dispersion inversion schema is the dominant method used to invert the
surface wave data generated by the cross-correlation of ambient noise
signals. However, the two-step methods have a 1-D layered model
assumption, which does not account for the complex wave propagation. To
overcome this limitation, we employ a 2-D wave-equation dispersion
inversion (WD) method which reconstructs the subsurface shear (S)
velocity model in one step, and elastic wave-equation modeling is used
to simulate the subsurface wave propagation. In the WD method, the
optimal S velocity model is obtained by minimizing the dispersion curve
differences between the observed and predicted surface wave data. This
dispersion curve misfit makes the WD method less prone to getting stuck
to local minima compared with full waveform inversion. In our study, the
observed Scholte waves are generated by cross-correlating continuous
ambient noise signals recorded by ocean-bottom nodes (OBN) in the 3-D
Gorgon OBN survey, Western Australia. For every two OBN lines, the WD
method is used to retrieve the 2-D S velocity structure beneath the
first line. We then use a robust neural network based method to
interpolate the inverted 2-D velocity slices to a continuous 3-D
velocity model and also obtain a corresponding 3-D uncertainty model.
Overall, a robust waveform and dispersion match between the observed and
predicted data is observed across all of the Gorgon OBN lines both on
inverted and interpolated velocity models.