Shallow Water Body Data Processing Based on the Seismic Oceanography

Physical properties of sea water,such as salinity,temperature,density and acoustic velocity,could be demarcated through degradation of energy caused by water absorption,attenuation and other factors.To overcome the challenging difficulties in the quick monitoring of these physical properties,we have explored the high resolution marine seismic survey to instantly characterize them.Based on the unique wavefield propagating in the sea water,we have developed a new approach to suppress the noise caused by the shallow sea water disturbance and obtain useful information for estimating the sea water structure.This approach improves seismic data with high signal-to-noise ratio and resolution.The seismic reflection imaging can map the sea water structure acoustically.Combined with the knowledge of local water body structure profile over years,the instant model for predicting the sea water properties could be built using the seismic data acquired from the specially designed high precision marine seismic acquisition.This model can also be updated with instant observation and the complete data processing system.The present study has the potential value to many applications,such as 3D sea water monitoring,engineering evaluation,geological disaster assessment and environmental assessment.

Research on submesoscale eddy and front near the South Shetland Islands(Antarctic Peninsula)using seismic oceanography data

The submesoscale processes, including submesoscale eddies and fronts, have a strong vertical velocity, can thus make important supplements to the nutrients in the upper ocean. Using legacy multichannel seismic data AP25 of cruise EW9101 acquired northeast of the South Shetland Islands(Antarctic Peninsula) in February 1991, we identified an oceanic submesoscale eddy with the horizontal scale of ~4 km and a steep shelf break front that has variable dip angles from 5° to 10°. The submesoscale eddy is an anticyclonic eddy, which carries warm core water, can accelerate ice shelves melting. The upwelling induced by shelf break front may play an important role in transporting nutrients to the sea surface. The seismic images with very high lateral resolution may provide a new insight to understand the submesoscale and even small-scale oceanic phenomena in the interior.

Quantitative estimation of bubble volume fraction of submarine seep plumes by modeling seismic oceanography data

Submarine seep plumes are a natural phenomenon in which different types of gases migrate through deep or shallow subsurface sediments and leak into seawater in pressure gradient.When detected using acoustic data,the leaked gases frequently exhibit a flame-like structure.We numerically modelled the relationship between the seismic response characteristic and bubble volume fraction to establish the bubble volume fraction in the submarine seep plume.Results show that our models are able to invert and predict the bubble volume fraction from field seismic oceanography data,by which synthetic seismic sections in different dominant frequencies could be numerically simulated,seismic attribute sections(e.g.,instantaneous amplitude,instantaneous frequency,and instantaneous phase)extracted,and the correlation between the seismic attributes and bubble volume fraction be quantitatively determined with functional equations.The instantaneous amplitude is positively correlated with bubble volume fraction,while the instantaneous frequency and bubble volume fraction are negatively correlated.In addition,information entropy is introduced as a proxy to quantify the relationship between the instantaneous phase and bubble volume fraction.As the bubble volume fraction increases,the information entropy of the instantaneous phase increases rapidly at the beginning,followed by a slight upward trend,and finally stabilizes.Therefore,under optimal noise conditions,the bubble volume fraction of submarine seep plumes can be inverted and predicted based on seismic response characteristics in terms of seismic attributes.

Seismic Images of Shallow Waters over the Shatsky Rise in the Northwest Pacific Ocean

Recent studies have demonstrated the ability of seismic oceanography to reveal finescale vertical structures of water column in the oceans based on multichannel seismic(MCS)reflection data.Such information can clarify the dynamic processes of mixing,exchange,and translation of water mass and energy.In this study,we present four MCS lines and satellite data to show high-resolution seismic images of shallow waters over the Shatsky Rise in the Northwest Pacific Ocean,where the Kuroshio Exten-sion passes and bifurcates.One of our MCS transects crossed the center of an anticyclonic warm eddy on August 28,2010,confirmed by satellite data such as sea level anomaly(SLA),geostrophic current anomaly(GCA),and sea surface temperature anomaly(SSTa).The seismic image showed that the eddy vertical structure featured a bowl-like shape and onion-like internal layering.The slightly tilted(<0.5°)surface of the eddy was 400m below the sea surface,indicating a subsurface eddy.The eddy was inferred to have a radius of 50 km and a maximum thickness of 500m.Other MCS sections demonstrated the submesoscale structure of oceanfronts,characterized by the dipping reflectors(>2°-3°)at the boundaries between water masses with differing properties.In addition,the discrepancies in SLA,GCA,and SSTa between water masses resulted in different seismic reflectivities.The water masses with high SLA,anticyclonic GCA and positive SSTa featured high-amplitude,continuous,clear-layered,and non-linear reflections,whereas those with low SLA,cyclonic GCA,and negative SSTa were associated with weak,fragmented,less stratification,and more linear reflectors.

Estimation of seawater movement based on reflectors from a seismic profile

Seismic oceanography is a new cross-discipline of reflection seismology and physical oceanography. The biggest difference between seismic oceanography and traditional reflection seismology is its research object of time-varied seawater. How to estimate the temporal variations of reflectors in water structure and make some corrections in seismic data are basic problems in seismic oceanography research. Here a method of estimation for seawater movement is provided based on the reflectors. The application results of this method to the simulated and field seismic data turn out to be acceptable. As compared with the previous research, this method has the advantages of low-dependence on migration velocity and dip of reflectors, and it is very suitable for correction in a spectral analysis using seismic data, which is very useful in the research of ocean energy budget.

Inversion of Seawater Physical Properties Based on Allied Elastic Impedance

Inversion of seawater physical parameters (temperature, salinity and density) from seismic data is an important part of Seismic Oceanography, which was raised recent years to study physical oceanography. However present methods have problems that inversion accuracy is not high or inverted parameters are incomprehensive. To overcome these problems, this paper derives Allied Elastic Impedance (AEI), from which we can extract acoustic velocity and density of seawater directly. Furthermore this paper proposes a method to fit temperature and salinity with acoustic velocity and density respectively, breaking through the limitation that temperature and salinity can only be extracted from acoustic velocity. After applying it to model and real data, we find that this method not only solves the problem that ocean density is hard to extract, but also increases accuracy of other parameters, with the temperature and salinity resolution of 0.06°C and 0.02 psu respectively. All results show that AEI is promising in inversion of seawater physical parameters.