| Abstract: | The amplitude of seismic energy varies over a tremendous range. Some of the factors responsible for such variation do not contain subsurface information; these include source strength and coupling, geophone sensitivity, array directivity, instrument balance, scattering in the near-surface, for example. Others depend on subsurface factors but do not convey information about lithology or hydrocarbon accumulation in a form from which we are able to extract it; these include spherical divergence, ray-path curvature, loss in transmission through intervening reflectors, peg-leg multiples, reflector rugosity, and curvature. The amplitude-governing factors we are primarily interested in are reflection coefficient, the interference of reflections from the top and base of a sand, and absorption. |
