Seismic Soundoff

Mojtaba Rajabi discusses his upcoming Pacific South Honorary Lecture, "Present-Day Crustal Stress Across Spatial Scales." The present-day crustal in-situ stress field is of extreme importance for understanding both natural processes (e.g., understanding neotectonics, earthquake, and seismic hazard assessment) and anthropogenic activities (e.g., exploration and production of geothermal energy, grou...

Peter Rowbotham discusses his paper, "Investment in North Sea seismic leading to new opportunities," from the April issue of The Leading Edge. Peter makes the case for why it's wise to invest in seismic data. He also shares why the beginning of a project is the most important and the context where seismic projects deliver the most value. Additionally, he answers the questions: * How does he approa...

Warren Neff and Luke Gallery discuss exposing high school students to geophysics and how to incorporate the field into Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) programs. Warren Neff is a STEM teacher at Bartlesville High School in Bartlesville, OK. Luke Gallery is a senior at Bartlesville High School. Luke and Warren published a paper titled, "Past geophysics science fair projects inspire...

Yunyue Elita Li discusses her upcoming South & East Asia Honorary Lecture, "Listening to Singapore: Harvesting urban noise for space, water, and hazard mitigation." Today, more than half of the world's population lives in urban areas with a projected growth of over two-thirds in 2050. The city-state of Singapore faces the challenges of supporting a sustainable urban system with a growing populatio...

Kevin Bohacs discusses his upcoming course, "Introduction to Field Safety Leadership." In Kevin's course, participants will learn how to prepare for, conduct, and document safe and effective field activities involving students (field camps) and/or local inhabitants (Geoscientist without Borders) by following SEG guidelines and generally accepted health, safety, security, and environmental (HSSE) p...

Chester Weiss discusses the latest research from The Leading Edge to successfully use geophysical tools at well sites. Chester shares the impact of well infrastructure on geophysical assessment, how to use EM successfully, the challenges of using near-surface, and the applicability of this research in other cluttered environments. Along with our conversation in episode 141 on the life cycle of a w...

Aria Abubakar, the SEG-AAPG IMAGE 2022 Technical Program Chair, discusses what to expect for the Technical Program at IMAGE 2022. Aria highlights the changes for 2022, breaks down the themes and tracks for the program, answers common questions, and shares why you should submit your abstract before the deadline (17 March 2022). He also discusses the benefits of attending the fully in-person meeting...

Pico de Orizaba is the highest volcano in Mexico and preserves a glacier at the top. The volcano is an old structure and has experienced several cone collapses and subsequent rebuilds in its eruptive history of fewer than 600,000 years. Thinking about the potential threat to villages located along the major river drainages, Drs. Katrin Sieron and Blake Weissling submitted a Geoscientists without B...

Don Lawton of Carbon Management Canada and Mark Tinker of Quantum Technology Sciences discuss the latest technological advances for carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS). In this cutting-edge conversation on the state of technology for CCUS, Don and Mark highlight the need to accelerate the development and implementation of CCUS technologies, illustrate what better carbon storage monitor...

Sue Carr and Patrick Meroney discuss the life of the well from the February 2022 special section in The Leading Edge. Sue and Patrick discuss the importance of a shared definition of a well, spotlight the most important well component for geophysicists, highlight the five life cycles of a well, and break down why well logs are the key piece for successful drilling. This conversation will help geop...

Amine Ourabah discusses carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) from the January 2022 special section on seismic acquisition in The Leading Edge. Amine explains why CCUS is at the center of the net-zero-emission conversation, the need for cheaper and easier-to-use technology, and the unique innovations explored in his field trial. This conversation lays out the seismic and technological ne...

Laura Bandura discusses her 2022 Distinguished Lecture, "Quantifying the Business Impact of Seismic Technology to Deepwater Exploration." In a low oil price environment, it is more important than ever to prioritize technology projects to ensure the greatest return on investment. There is much pressure to accelerate the time-to-impact of corporate research and technology programs. In many cases, th...

Danilo Jotta Ariza Ferreira discusses modern geostatistic methodologies from the December 2021 special section on Latin America in The Leading Edge. Danilo shares how to avoid two common pitfalls in geostatistical modeling, why models are always wrong (but you should still use them), and highlights a few innovations in seismic-based geophysical solutions. This conversation will help geophysicists...

Klaus Holliger discusses his 2022 Honorary Lecture, "Using Near-Surface Geophysics to Estimate Soil and Rock Physical Properties." The shallow subsurface contains our drinking water and produces our food, and it is also where we ultimately discharge much of our waste. Recent history has taught us that overuse, let alone abuse, of our environment, may lead to the long-term detriment to our liveliho...

Joe Dellinger discusses his 2022 Distinguished Instructor Short Course, "Forensic data processing." Are you a geophysicist that processes seismic data, or someone who uses the processed results of that data? If so, you probably think of seismic data as something that arrives on a tape or "from the cloud." However, your data also has other, hidden stories to tell - stories that likely were shredded...

Miguel Bosch discusses his Honorary Lecture, "The new paradigms in seismic inversion." Miguel explains how elastic Full Waveform Inversion and the Markov Chain Monte Carlo approach improve seismic inversion, discusses if data analysis and machine learning are essential to practice inversion, and highlights new tools that will improve the accuracy of inversion. This conversation provides great valu...

Thomas Finkbeiner discusses geomechanics from the November 2021 special section in The Leading Edge. In this episode, Thomas highlights the link between geophysics and geomechanics in developing renewable and unconventional resources, explores case studies presented in the special section, shares the current state of research on induced seismicity during CO2 injection, and illustrates how geomecha...

SEG President Anna Shaughnessy discusses the major challenges and decisions facing the SEG and the geosciences in the years ahead. In this episode, Anna discusses the recently formed Strategic Options Task Force addressing possible collaboration with other societies. She also highlights the new JEDI Committee (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee), offers words of wisdom to young ge...

Mark Zoback discusses his Honorary Lecture, "Geomechanical Issues Affecting Long-Term Storage of CO2." In this episode, Mark highlights how oil and gas companies are best positioned to address the needs for large-scale carbon storage. He discusses the role of depleted oil and gas reservoirs for CO2 storage, as well as the geomechanical issues that have to be considered. Mark also shares what is mo...

Vemund Thorkildsen discusses his paper, "Revisiting holistic migration," published in October's The Leading Edge. In this episode, Vemund discusses questioning the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, mining gaps in past research, and examining the applicability of holistic migration to seismic field data. He also shares how he connected with Enders Robinson to serve as co-author on the paper. Vemund...

Michael Burianyk discusses his new book, Understanding Amplitudes: Basic seismic analysis for rock properties. In the book, methods and techniques used to estimate rock properties from seismic data, based on an understanding of the elastic properties of materials and rocks and how seismic reflection amplitudes change, are described. Using AVO and other techniques, we can characterize rocks and the...

Henning Hoeber discusses a new tool for rock physics in his recent paper published in September's The Leading Edge. In this episode, Henning explains the theory of omitted variable bias (OVB) and its connection to rock physics, why OVB hasn't appeared before in the geoscience literature, how OVB helps geophysicists understand biases in models, the real-world implications for improving a bias model...

Bill Harbert highlights his SEG course, "Petrophysics and Geophysics Relevant to CO2 Enhanced Oil Recovery." In this forward-looking conversation, Bill shares why it's the right time to discuss enhanced oil recovery (EOR), the geophysical method that will have the greatest impact on EOR, one of the biggest pitfalls when geophysical methods are applied to CO2 monitoring and EOR, and what will happe...

Myrto Papadopoulou and Farbod Khosro Anjom spotlight the recent advances in surface-wave tomography for near-surface applications from August's The Leading Edge. In this episode, Myrto and Farbod discuss why surface-wave tomography has not been applied regularly to near-surface applications, highlight more efficient models they developed, explain how automatic data screening allowed for their brea...

Jack Dvorkin highlights his upcoming Honorary Lecture, "Modern Rock Physics – Challenges and Solutions." Jack explains why some scientists have embraced unnecessary complexity, the best way to generate new scientific questions, the first step to embrace simplicity, and possible consequences if rock physics continues to trend towards complexity. Visit https://seg.org/podcast to find links to all th...