Abstract
This chapter presents a case study of acoustic waveform tomography applied to active-source long-offset data acquired across the San Andreas Fault near Parkfield, California. A multi-scale frequency-domain adjoint method was employed to invert the early, forward-scattered, P wave arrivals. The inversion uses the lower part of the available frequency spectrum to increase the resolution of a kinematic model about four times. The final waveform tomography model reveals the shape of a large intrusion with unprecedented detail, and it indicates the position of two major faults, although it falls short of resolving their structure. The quality of the solution is controlled by the data fit and a sonic log from the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth research borehole. Data pre-conditioning and weighting, the inversion strategy and the residual reduction are presented in detail. The discussion focuses on the implications of the signal bandwidth for the required accuracy of the initial model and on the problem of decreasing robustness at higher frequencies.
Written by Florian Bleibinhaus, Department of Geography and Geology, Salzburg University, Salzburg, Austria
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Fichtner, A. (2011). Application of Full Waveform Tomography to Active-Source Surface-Seismic Data. In: Full Seismic Waveform Modelling and Inversion. Advances in Geophysical and Environmental Mechanics and Mathematics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15807-0_14
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