• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.603-620
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• 2021

A land nodal seismic system was employed to acquire seismic reflection data using stand-alone cable-free receivers in a land-river area. Acquiring reliable data using this technology is very cost effective, as it avoids topographic problems in the deployment and collection of receivers. The land nodal airgun system deployed on the mouth of the Hyungsan River (in Pohang, Gyeongsangbuk Province) used airgun sources in the river and receivers on the riverbank, with subparallel source and receiver lines, approximately 120 m-spaced. Seismic data collected on the riverbank are characterized by a low signal-to-noise (S/N) and inconsistent reflection events. Most of the events are represented by hyperbola in the field records, including direct waves, guided waves, air waves, and Scholte surface waves, in contrast to the straight lines in the data collected conventionally where source and receiver lines are coincident. The processing strategy included enhancing the signal behind the low-frequency large-amplitude noise with a cascaded application of bandpass and f-k filters for the attenuation of air waves. Static time delays caused by the cross-offset distance between sources and receivers are corrected, with a focus on mapping the shallow reflections obscured by guided wave and air wave noise. A new time-distance equation and curve for direct and air waves are suggested for the correction of the static time delay caused by the cross-offset between source and receiver. Investigation of the minimum cross-offset gathers shows well-aligned shallow reflections around 200 ms after time-shift correction. This time-delay static correction based on the direct wave is found essential to improving the data from parallel source and receiver lines. Data acquisition and processing strategies developed in this study for land nodal airgun seismic systems will be readily applicable to seismic data from land-sea areas when high-resolution signal data becomes available in the future for investigation of shallow gas reservoirs, faults, and engineering designs for the development of coastal areas.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.109-115
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• 2008

It is very important to estimate the physical properties of survey area and delineate the geological basement in marine site survey for the design of offshore structures. For the purpose of providing high quality data by means of engineering site survey, it is necessary to apply several survey techniques and carry out the integrated interpretation to each other. In this study, we applied single channel seismic reflection method and OBC (Ocean Bottom Cable) type seismic refraction method at shallow marine. We used a dual boomer-single channel streamer as a source-receiver in seismic reflection survey and airgun source-the developed OBC type streamer in seismic refraction survey. We made 24 channels OBC type streamer which has 4m channel interval and each channel is composed of single hydrophone and preamplifier. We tested the field applicability of the proposed method and applied the typical seismic data processing methods to the obtained reflection data in order to enhance the data quality and image resolution. In order to estimate the geological velocity distribution from refraction data, seismic refraction tomography technique was applied. Therefore, we could successfully perform time-depth conversion using the velocity information as an integrated interpretation. The proposed method could provide reliable geologic information such as sediment layer thickness and 3D basement depth map.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.127-136
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• 2008

To identify the potential area of gas hydrate in the Ulleung Basin, 2-D and 3-D seismic surveys using R/V Tamhae II were conducted in 2005 and 2006. Seismic survey equipment consisted of navigation system, recording system, streamer cable and air-gun source. For reliable velocity analysis in a deep sea area where water depths are mostly greater than 1,000 m and the target depth is up to about 500 msec interval below the seafloor, 3-km-long streamer and 1,035 $in^3$ tuned air-gun array were used. During the survey, a suite of quality control operations including source signature analysis, 2-D brute stack, RMS noise analysis and FK analysis were performed. The source signature was calculated to verify its conformity to quality specification and the gun dropout test was carried out to examine signature changes due to a single air gun's failure. From the online quality analysis, we could conclude that the overall data quality was very good even though some seismic data were affected by swell noise, parity error, spike noise and current rip noise. Especially, by checking the result of data quality enhancement using FK filtering and missing trace restoration technique for the 3-D seismic data inevitably contaminated with current rip noises, the acquired data were accepted and the field survey could be conducted continuously. Even in survey areas where the acquired data would be unsuitable for quality specification, the marine seismic survey efficiency could be improved by showing the possibility of noise suppression through onboard data processing.