Dobrin Lecture - University of Houston
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Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

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Dobrin Lecture 2015

21st Annual Milton B. Dobrin Lecture

March 25, 2015
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Hilton University of Houston
4800 Calhoun Rd., Houston, TX 77004

 

Speaker: Dr. Christine Krohn

Lecture Title: Technology and Its Impact on Tackling Earth’s Heterogeneity: Success and challenges for model-based geophysics.

 

About the Speaker: 

 Krohn

Dr. Christine E. Krohn

Senior Research Associate, ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company

&

Past Chair of SEG Research Committee

Christine Krohn has over 30 years of experience in geophysics research at ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company in areas ranging from areas of simultaneous sourcing, Vibroseis, seismic receivers, near-surface characterization, tomography, surface waves, 3D VSPs, crosswell seismic and rock physics. Currently, she serves as director-at-large on the SEG board of directors.  She is past chair of the SEG Research committee and organizer of numerous research workshops. In 1978, she earned a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Texas at Austin in the area of experimental condensed-matter physics.



About the Lecture:

There is both an opportunity and a challenge to use model-based processing methods to revolutionize our ability to characterize reservoir properties while incorporating more of the true earth complexity with relaxed acquisition requirements. For the marine case,I will highlight a high-resolution Full Wavefield Inversion (FWI) example demonstrating improved characterization of a highly heterogeneous overburden. Then, I will demonstrate with a number of near-surface examples, the complexity challenge for model-based processing on land.  I will start with the Vibroseis source signature and its use for inversion of simultaneous source data.  I will then show data examples of unexpectedly large vertical and horizontal variations in velocity and attenuation and their effect on P-waves, S-waves and surface waves. Finally, I will demonstrate the ability of surface-wave tomographic inversion to estimate rapidly varying surface-wave properties and then to predict and remove the complex surface waves, retaining low-frequency reflections, even with highly under-sampled 3D data.