Seismic Soundoff

The seismic data set is a fundamental requirement for producing oil and gas fields. Reservoir modeling utilizing seismic interpretations drove insights into reservoir quality and performance, helping to understand the communication between reservoir units and wells, particularly in fields with many wells. Over time, technological advancements led to a reduction in the cost of reservoir modeling, w...

Leo Eisner discusses his Honorary Lecture, "Mapping pore pressure with beach balls." The stress field of the Earth's crust has been studied for many decades as a part of seismology and geomechanics. Traditional stress inversion methods utilize focal mechanisms of earthquakes as this is typically the only data available at a regional scale and lower crust. With earthquake mechanisms, it's possible...

Serguei Goussev discusses his new book, Gravity & Magnetic Encyclopedic Dictionary. This book contains more than 3,200 entries and presents a terminology-guided summary of the gravity and magnetic theory, measuring instruments, methods of data acquisition, processing, analysis, and interpretation for geophysical studies of the Earth and other planets. Terrestrial applications include engineering (...

GeoFORCE Program Director Dr. Leah Turner discusses building the pipeline for the next generation of geoscientists. GeoFORCE Texas received the 2022 Special Commendation Award at IMAGE. The program is a free K-12 outreach program designed to increase the number and diversity of students pursuing STEM degrees and careers, especially geology. Each summer GeoFORCE Texas takes over 300 high school stu...

Paul Bauman discusses the inaugural Global Sustainability Lecture series, "A Strategy for Improving Rural Water Supply Development in Sub-Saharan Africa." Though 98% of the available freshwater in the world is groundwater, groundwater resources are not easily available in much of the world, where subsurface water is the only option. Today, more than 400 million people in sub-Saharan Africa live in...

Professors Kirsten Nicholson and Klaus Neumann lead a Geoscientists without Borders (GWB) project to find safe drinking water for two communities in the Sagarmatha National Park, Nepal. This country most famously is home to the world's favorite trekking destination - the Himalayans. Even though this area is popular with tourists, it struggles with adequate drinking water. Diseases due to unsafe wa...

November's The Leading Edge presents a selection of studies that gives an idea of the breadth of geophysics that aids in mitigating natural hazards, covering natural and induced earthquake phenomena and landslides. In this conversation with host Andrew Geary, Heather Bedle and Chris Garneau explore public misperceptions of geohazards, the power of experiencing earthquakes, and ways to improve scie...

Cara Hunter and Teresa Santana discuss the value and importance of mentoring for geoscientists. In this conversation with host Andrew Geary, Cara and Teresa highlight Mentoring365, a program that matches students and early career professionals with Earth and space sciences experts. They explain the need for this program, explore networking in 2023, and offer tips for first-time mentors and mentees...

Alexander Braun discusses planetary geophysics highlighted in October's The Leading Edge. This is the first special section dedicated to planetary geophysics in the 40-year history of The Leading Edge. And it's timely considering the many international activities evolving rapidly toward exploration of the moon, Mars, and other planets and the availability of exploration geophysics expertise within...

Steve Darnell discusses digital transformation in the oil and gas industry, highlighted in September's The Leading Edge. Complemented by large volumes of usable data, the evolution of computational hardware and software creates new opportunities for technological innovation in the energy industry. Digital transformation adopts existing technologies (such as cloud services) and develops new technol...

Bill Abriel (SEG Co-Chair) and George Koperna (SPE Co-Chair) preview Energy in Data 2022 - How to Solve Data Challenges Without Breaking Your Systems or Your Budget. This Energy in Data Conference is organized by AAPG, SEG, and SPE to bring together multi-disciplinary communities to discuss the data challenges and solutions in areas such as oil and gas operations, critical minerals, geothermal, ca...

Carlos Calderón-Macías discusses his 2022 Latin America Honorary Lecture, "Near-surface scattering in seismic data: from signal to noise and noise to signal." Carlos holistically explores the near-surface scattering problem in this conversation with host Andrew Geary. He highlights ways to understand the problem better and why using the noise as signal approach should be further developed. He also...

Tim Johnson discusses his article in August's The Leading Edge about real-time electrical resistivity tomography (ERT). Time-lapse electrical imaging has been used for diverse scientific and engineering problems to monitor changes in the subsurface associated with fluid injections, fluid flow, solute transport, phase changes, and other physical and chemical processes. The burgeoning applications o...

Roel Snieder discusses his 2022 SEG-AAPG Distinguished Lecture, "Measuring variations in the seismic velocity as a diagnostic of rock damage and healing." Interferometric methods in seismology have made it possible to detect time-lapse changes in seismic velocity with an accuracy of about 0.1%. Combined with using noise as a seismic source, it is under the right conditions possible to detect such...

Chris Hanton, Director of Digital Transformation Solutions at Ikon Science, discusses the latest insights using machine learning and artificial intelligence. In this conversation with host Andrew Geary, Chris highlights one frequently overlooked variable that can undermine the best technology. He also shares how technologists can ensure data is trustworthy and valuable, when cutting-edge analytics...

One of SEG's great traditions is the special recognition of individuals and organizations for their contributions to geophysics and the Society. In this special episode, we celebrate Öz Yilmaz and Xianhuai Zhu for their Maurice Ewing Medal and Virgil Kauffman Gold Medal honors, respectively. Bill Abriel opens the episode highlighting the significance of both the Kauffman Gold Medal and the Maurice...

Souvik Mukherjee discusses his article in July's The Leading Edge about high-resolution imaging of subsurface infrastructure using AI. The use of drones for geophysical data acquisition and artificial intelligence (AI) for geophysical data processing, imaging, and interpretation are active focus areas in current industry and academic applications. Unlocking their cumulative potential in single-foc...

Mark Willis discusses his upcoming Distinguished Instructor Short Course, "Distributed acoustic sensing for seismic measurements – what geophysicists and engineers need to know." Geoscientists and engineers are very comfortable using seismic data sets acquired with geophones, hydrophones, and accelerometers because they have a long, well-defined set of standards for acquiring, processing, and inte...

Olga Nedorub and Diana Sineva preview IMAGE 2022 and the upcoming panel, "Changing The Dynamics Of Energy Use." Olga starts with a brief overview of the technical program at IMAGE and how Diana reached out to her to host this panel. Next, Diana explains how energy efficiency is the glue to the current energy transition, the difference between energy conservation and energy efficiency, and why atte...

Sara K. McBride discusses her paper, "Evidence-based guidelines for protective actions and earthquake early warning systems," in the January/February issue of GEOPHYSICS. In this engaging and helpful conversation, Sara highlights the various protective actions people can take during an earthquake. She also shares who is most likely to be injured during an earthquake and how seismologists, earth sc...

Arnab Dhara discusses his paper, "Physics-guided deep autoencoder to overcome the need for a starting model in full-waveform inversion," in the June issue of The Leading Edge. In recent years, physics-driven machine learning applications have been proposed wherein physics is integrated into the data-driven model to improve the ability of the machine learning methods to generalize and potentially o...

Yanlong Niu discusses his paper, "In-situ physical properties of reclaimed lands in Singapore," from the May issue of The Leading Edge. Reclaimed land construction is crucial for the sustainable development of the land-scarce city-state of Singapore. To characterize the physical properties of two different types of reclaimed lands, Yanlong and his co-authors conducted both active and passive seism...

Scott Singleton discusses why you should attend the 2022 Unconventional Resources Technology Conference in Houston, TX. Unconventional Resources Technology Conference (URTeC) is a premier event focused on the latest science and technology applied to the exploration and development of unconventional resources, emphasizing integrating multiple disciplines. Scott breaks down why every geophysicist sh...

Ariel Lellouch discusses his upcoming Middle East and Africa Honorary Lecture, "Applications of fiber-optic sensing to borehole seismology." Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) is an emerging technology that leverages optical fibers to record the seismic wavefield with an unprecedented spatial resolution. In this conversation with host Andrew Geary, Ariel makes a case for geophysicists to utilize D...

SEG President-Elect Ken Tubman discusses the outcome of the Strategic Options Task Force. In this conversation with host Andrew Geary, Ken provides an inside look at the decision-making of the SEG Strategic Options Task Force. He shares his reasons for voting to keep SEG independent, highlights the feedback from the focus groups, and previews the SEG Transformation Task Force. He also offers insig...