Attributes

We lose a lot of information during the processing

sequence
Amplitude is lost due to the Automatic Gain Control
Stacking changes frequencies and amplitudes
Traces are reshaped during deconvolution process
Traces are filtered
Attributes are an attempt to recover this
information in a meaningful display
The term attribute can be applied to any type of
information derived from the data. Velocity is an
example of an attribute.
Amplitude
In general, amplitudes decay fast, so some
type of gain control must be used to make
all the data visible on the seismic section.
Correct for decay due to the wavefront
spreading (e
-kt
).
Automatic Gain Control (AGC) changes the
amplitudes within a moving window of a
second or so.
True amplitude displays have only minimal
spreading corrections applied. Some extra
care is required.
Gas oil interface can be a very strong reflector
(but not always, can depend on porosity etc.)
Oil-water interface can also reflect.
gas
oil
water
Seismic bright-spot
rock
gas?
oil?
water/rock
Amplitude envelope
Lets draw a curve around a seismic trace, we will call it the trace
envelope for now, later we will also call it the instantaneous
amplitude
Trace envelope
trace
Draw the curve so it is tangent to the trace where it touches.
A better example of the trace envelope
The complex trace
Lets take a different look at the seismic
trace wiggles
Suppose we have a simple sinusoidal wave of
one frequency
T = 1/f
The complex trace
We can view this as looking at a spot on a
turning wheel when viewed from the side
The wheel analogy
Even if the wiggle isnt a sinusoid, it can
still be described in this way if we allow the
wheel to change speed and size. This
allows us to change the frequency and
amplitude of the wiggle
Going from the wheel to the wiggle is easy,
going the other way is more difficult, but
can be done mathematically.
Phasors
Now consider looking at the wheel head on
Lets drop the wheel part and just look at a
single spoke thats going round
Now we can let the spoke rotate with a
variable speed and variable amplitude
Pictorial example of a complex seismic trace (Taner et al., 1979)
phasor
The rotating arrow is sometimes called the phasor representation.
It has an amplitude, phase angle, and speed
Wheel speed
is the
instantaneous
frequency in
cycles/sec
Phasor length is the
instantaneous
amplitude
Total angle is the instantaneous phase ( in degrees or cycles).
Amplitude envelope
Instantaneous amplitude turns out to be the amplitude envelope of the
seismic trace.
Trace envelope
trace
Draw the curve so it is tangent to the trace where it touches.
Instantaneous frequency
If we were to measure some sort of running average of the number of
zero crossings per second, we could get some idea about instantaneous
frequency
Trace envelope
trace
Instantaneous phase
If we kept track of how many zero crossing the trace had we would get
some idea of instantaneous phase
Trace envelope
trace
0
180
360 (or 0)
540 (or 180)
360
From Schlumberger web site:
Instantaneous amplitude is color-coded
for the background on a wiggle-trace
plot.
Instantaneous amplitude can show a bright-spot from gas-rock and
oil gas interfaces
rock
gas
oil
water/rock
Compare to the true-amplitude section
Instantaneous phase shows coherency from trace-to-trace.
flat-spot
Units of degrees
Instantaneous frequency also useful for detecting coherency
Oil and gas may preferentially attenuate
the higher frequencies, so it has lower
frequencies.
Measured in cycles/s
Smoothed instantaneous frequency makes better picture
Oil and gas may preferentially attenuate
the higher frequencies, so this leaves a
frequency shadow beneath the bright-
spot.
Cycles/second
From Tanner, CSEG Recorder, Sept. 2001
Self organizing map clustering supposed to be indicative of
lithology, sold by Rock Solid Images, Inc.