Geophysics The Leading Edge Of Exploration

This personalized narrative is both a technical and economic history showing how exploration geophysics evolved from simple scientific beginnings into a sophisticated science impacting civilization in diverse ways. It presents geophysics as an intriguing scientific and technical field full of sharp contrasts, revealing it as an unusual blend of the theoretical and the practical, the laboratory and the field, the nonprofit effort and the profit-making venture, a cornerstone of peace and an implement of war. Written by members of the profession well acquainted with many of the key actions and players, this book describes intriguing developments and applications that took place within three interrelated fields of earth physics-exploration geophysics, seismology, and oceanography-during the never-ending search for oil and natural gas. Stressing challenge and change, this chronicle is bracketed by two major flex points in Western civilization-the initial waging of deadly global war (1914-18) and the conclusion in the 1990s of the Cold War that threatened civilization with nuclear annihilation. It is a complex story of people and events that highlights the emergence of major industries on the international scene. The book is must reading for all practicing earth scientists and their families, investors in the industry, and people interested in economic geology, public and world affairs, military warfare, the history of science and technology, environmental sciences, and even outdoor adventure.

Includes discussions of fundamental concepts, explained using heuristic descriptions of seismic modelling, deconvolution, depth migration, and tomography; processing and contouring pitfalls; and developments in time-lapse seismology, borehole geophysics, multicomponent seismology, and integrated reservoir characterization.

Capitalizing on knowledge learned over decades and combining underlying theory with practical bases, this book presents a systematic analysis of the issues involved in high-resolution seismic exploration. Translated from the original Chinese edition published in 1993 by Petroleum Industry Press and now updated to reflect contemporary developments, the book is adept at clarifying the objectives and approaches toward better precision in seismic prospecting. It provides innovative views on fundamental concepts including: perspective resolution and perspective S/N; the empirical relationship between compressional velocity (Vp) and absorption coefficient (Q); constructing basin absorption models; understanding sand layer tracking; improving dynamic and static corrections of near-surface effects as well as deconvolution; achieving maximum effective bandwidth of seismic data; and regressive seismic impedance inversion. It is an excellent reference for those involved in seismic prospecting research, data processing, and geologic interpretation, and it is recommended for workers as well as professors and graduate students.

Presents a collection of papers which appear in the September-October 2010 Geophysics special section, written by recognised experts in various areas of exploration geophysics, plus an additional group of papers drawn from Geophysics which address areas beyond those invited articles. The result is a snapshot of the state-of-the-art in the field.

This ground-breaking work is the first to cover the fundamentals of hydrogeophysics from both the hydrogeological and geophysical perspectives. Authored by leading experts and expert groups, the book starts out by explaining the fundamentals of hydrological characterization, with focus on hydrological data acquisition and measurement analysis as well as geostatistical approaches. The fundamentals of geophysical characterization are then at length, including the geophysical techniques that are often used for hydrogeological characterization. Unlike other books, the geophysical methods and petrophysical discussions presented here emphasize the theory, assumptions, approaches, and interpretations that are particularly important for hydrogeological applications. A series of hydrogeophysical case studies illustrate hydrogeophysical approaches for mapping hydrological units, estimation of hydrogeological parameters, and monitoring of hydrogeological processes. Finally, the book concludes with hydrogeophysical frontiers, i.e. on emerging technologies and stochastic hydrogeophysical inversion approaches.

There is something for every subsurface professional in these fifty-two short essays by more than three dozen petroleum geoscientists. The roster includes some of the most prolific geophysicists of our time, as well as some recently qualified scientists. The topics are even more diverse, ranging from anisotropic media to pre-stack interpretation, and from stories of early seismic workstations to career advice for the future.