Enhancing body waves in passive seismic reflection exploration; a case study in Inner Mongolia, China

Among all geophysical exploration methods, seismic exploration is undoubtedly the most important due to its ability to allow depth exploration at high resolutions. Traditionally speaking, the method needs an active seismic source, such as dynamite, to generate energy and perform reflection and refractions. An active source usually means high cost, and it also can be quite difficult to implement when surface conditions are particularly complex. The use of passive seismic for reflection exploration does not require an active seismic source. It has the potential of providing a low-cost alternative technique in some exploration areas. The main issues related to passive-source body-wave exploration include suppressing the surface waves retrieved from sources located at or near the surface, as well as enhancing the body waves from random sources at depth. We address these problems by developing a preprocessing workflow to suppress the surface waves and the other unwanted coherent noise events in the original data without seriously affecting the remaining body waves. We also propose a method for separating surface and body waves based on the signal-to-noise ratio of the frequency-domain signals. Next, we use crosscorrelation to generate virtual shot gathers, just like the active ones, and use conventional seismic data processing steps to generate the final seismic imaging. By analyzing the passive data set collected from Inner Mongolia, we have verified the applicability of the proposed method, and the retrieved final stack section indicates good consistency with an active seismic stack section along the same line. Accordingly, we assert that the application of this data processing method will contribute to the body-wave imaging and the inversion analysis of passive seismic records.